


Modulation

by SleepsWithCoyotes



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space Opera, Identity Issues, M/M, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Spaceships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-03-09
Packaged: 2018-05-24 01:40:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6136918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepsWithCoyotes/pseuds/SleepsWithCoyotes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three months after the battle with the Insight capital ships, the <i>Winter Soldier</i> puts in at Manhattan Station for repairs. Tony Stark is there to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when too much CATWS meets too much Rebel Galaxy.

Despite it being right on the cusp of dawn by the local clock, Manhattan Station is furiously busy, ships of every size and make streaming in and out of her vast dock in a tightly-choreographed dance. The public comm channel is filled with the chatter of pilots, some cocky, some nervous, with hails and insults and a few pieces of well-meaning advice.

He glides into the fray at an easy two klicks per second, braking by increments as he nears the spacedock. _No sudden moves_. He remembers that part, though it's been years since he put in at a civilian port. Were this any of the Hydra bases he's visited in the past, he could drop out of warp and be parked in geosynchronous orbit before the station's proximity klaxons have time to sound; at worst he'd have a new pack of idiots crawling around with scanners looking for some mythical cloaking device.

Were this a Hydra base, his weapons would already be charged and locked, not powered down cold. He hates the vulnerability he feels, but he's got himself on a tight leash, remembers now that he needs to be careful. The polite dance he's engaging in with his fellow travelers still seems painfully slow by comparison.

The ping from the official channel can't come too soon.

" _Manhattan Station hailing unidentified craft_ ," a controller greets him, her words rapped out quickly but clearly. " _Do you read? Over._ "

"Manhattan Station, this is WS-32557038, reading loud and clear," he replies, settling rustily into the old call and response.

" _Please state the nature of your visit._ "

"Maintenance." Always a safe choice, though in this case it happens to be true.

" _Anything to declare_?"

"No."

" _Great. Got a name for me, pilot_?"

That's...unusual. Had she not logged it the first time? "WS-32557038," he repeats, more slowly this time.

" _Oh! Are you an AI? Sorry, I thought I was talking to the pilot. I mean! It's--I'm only reading one lif--_ bio _signature, and_ \--"

"I'm the only biosignature aboard," he cuts her off, wondering at her flustered tone. She doesn't sound duplicitous, merely embarrassed. Maybe he isn't the only one who wakes to find things changed in confusing ways, old habits suddenly frowned-upon, unshakable standards suddenly relaxed.

" _Ah...sir, I'm not looking for the ship's name. There's no_ pilot's _name on your registry, just the holding company. If you're not registered, I can't let you into dock. Security reasons,_ " she adds, as if that answers any objection he might have. It would have, except for one small thing.

He's sure there's a right and a wrong answer to her question, but at the moment he can't think what it is. He isn't certain himself whether he's angry or ashamed or for what reason. "I'm--" he begins, but he can't imagine what good giving his designation a third time will do. He's _told_ her his name. Why isn't she _listening_? Is she asking for his call sign instead?

" _It's okay, I've got this,_ " a new voice pipes up, startling everyone involved if the controller's sharp inhale over the comm is any indication. " _Manhattan Station? This is Tony Stark. Heads up; I'm transferring his pilot's registration now. JARVIS?_ "

" _Sending now, sir_ ," someone else says, JARVIS--Stark's AI, if his intelligence is correct--hacking the official channel with the same ease as Stark. He wants to bristle, except that Stark happens to be exactly the man he's been hoping to see. If Stark's decided to help with more than just maintenance--

" _What the--_ " the controller sputters. " _Is this a joke_?"

" _Not generally a fan of jokes that come with federal charges attached_ ," Stark drawls pleasantly enough.

" _I--of course. Uh, sorry for the delay, Sergeant Barnes_." It shouldn't be a surprise to hear that call sign again, the one that had complicated everything, but it is. " _You're cleared to dock at_ \--"

" _Wait, that's a jumpship, right_?" Stark breaks in. " _If you're atmosphere-worthy, come over to the lower SI dock instead. Plenty of room, and a lot more convenient for repairs_."

He doesn't like this. Manhattan Station is at least anonymous, likely much easier to leave in a hurry; the Stark Industries dock is anything but neutral territory. The only reason he's willing to consider asking Stark's help in the first place is because his research suggests the man is a friend of...someone he trusts, almost despite himself. And there's something about Stark that's familiar. Even so, to put himself directly into Stark's hands...?

"You haven't even seen what needs repairing yet," he scoffs, deliberately disrespectful. He's found it helps when dealing with civilians. "Gonna come aboard and take a look?"

" _Sure_ ," Stark says without missing a beat. " _Let's compromise. Come on over and park yourself, and I'll be there in ten. Deal_?"

He considers telling Stark to come alone, but he doubts it needs to be said. Nothing in his research suggests the man is stupid. "Deal," he says instead. "Coordinates?"

" _Sending_ ," the voice he assumes is JARVIS replies, an information packet arriving almost simultaneously.

He hesitates before accessing it, knowing just how dangerous a tiny bit of code can be, but if Stark plans on hijacking him, it'd make more sense to wait until he's docked. "Got it," he says, filing a new flight plan with the station that's instantly approved. "On my way."

" _Roger that_ ," says the controller, her voice pitched a full tone higher in awe. " _Welcome back, Sergeant_."

"Thanks," he says, not protesting the call-sign, though he wants to. And anyway, it's just 'welcome,' really, though he knows he's been here before. He remembers pictures, though he can't remember where he saw them or when. A bright disk of blue and green and swirls of white. Other images with the same landmasses picked out in mostly brown, with almost no white at all. Nightscapes made brilliant by great swaths of light stretching far out to sea.

The planet hanging below the station is filling up with creeping green again, its light belts shrunken from what he remembers but still familiar. Many things are, just without any context: frustrating hints that tell him as little as possible. He scans the city sprawling out far beneath the station only once, then dismisses it. _Where_ he is matters only to his missions, and at present he only has the one.

If this little side trip to Earth will get him back to destroying Hydra, that's all that matters.

***

Tony's not going to lie; he stood at the windows of his penthouse office and watched the _Winter Soldier_ cruise in with his own eyes, not trusting even JARVIS' state of the art displays to give him the full effect. Small, maneuverable, the jumpship is a work of art, able to take on crafts ten times her size through a combination of speed, adaptive firepower, and the sheer skill of her pilot. Watching her stately glide as she disappears into the vast bay, he finds himself thinking of Romanoff in her PA's costume: one deadly sonofabitch playing at being a drone.

" _Sir, I have the suits powered up and ready to be deployed_ ," JARVIS announces as Tony turns from the window. " _Shall I alert Captain Rogers as well_?"

"I thought he was still off-system?" Chasing the wild goose that just flew into Tony's dock, to be exact.

" _He is, sir, but perhaps his assistance in this matter would prove safer for all concerned_."

Tony considers it for all of two seconds before shaking his head. "If Barnes wanted to talk to his long-lost buddy, he would have. He came here instead--for maintenance, and why does a souped-up soldier with a souped-up ship come to Manhattan just for maintenance? Because he wants the best. Or," he adds in the interest of fairness, "because he figures Cap will hand me my ass if I fuck him over, and you know how I feel about being handed things."

" _Indeed, sir_ ," JARVIS replies in his best Jeevesian tone, clearly having been at the archives again. That's fine; it's not like Tony has anyone else to share his guilty love of ancient BBC programming with. Even Steve's not that old-fashioned.

"Don't think I don't see what you're implying there," Tony huffs. "And relax. I know what I'm doing. That said, keep those suits on standby, will you? If Barnes has a Spode moment, I'm going to need something stronger than a genius valet backing me up."

He could take a suit over to the planetside dock--it would certainly be quicker--but that's just asking for trouble. Barnes wouldn't still be alive without a healthy sense of paranoia to keep him on his toes, and Tony doesn't want to show up looking like the enemy, even if he technically has good cause. He takes his private elevator down to the garage instead, stepping out and almost directly into the hovercar JARVIS has waiting for him.

He lets JARVIS pilot the vehicle through Manhattan's busy streets, watching the traffic stream past above and below him as JARVIS pings less-aggressive AIs out of the way. Security lets him pass without a challenge as he drives into the dock itself, eeling around maintenance crews and slow, chugging haulers to a more secluded berth in the back. He has no illusions that the distance between the _Winter Soldier_ and the entrance will keep Barnes from bolting with his ship if it comes to it, but if he has to bring the suits into play, that buffer will hopefully give the rest of the crews time to evacuate.

Stepping out of the car, he takes a moment to just stand and stare, appreciating the _Winter Soldier's_ sleek lines with a craftsman's eye. She's not human tech; he can spot that much without even trying. Though it's possible she's seventy years out of date for _somebody_ in the quadrant, she's light years ahead of anything the Commonwealth's got in production, a deadly collection of swept angles that tricks his brain into looking for organic counterparts. Her gleaming silver plating is streaked with splashes of space dust, some of it charred from the trip down into atmosphere, but it all looks superficial, like a good pass with a hose would be enough to scour her clean again. He hates himself a little for finding her utterly gorgeous, but he's pretty sure even his dad would agree, which is ironic as hell, _considering_.

Though she should still be hot from reentry, the safety sensors are flashing him the all-clear as he steps up to the interface hub, thumbing the comm on as he runs a practiced eye over the screens. While he expects to see a laundry list of damage reports after the holes Barnes has been blowing through Hydra's network, her hull is sound and her systems are purring--all but her weapons array, which looks to have been powered down manually. He may not have much use for it himself, but Tony recognizes and appreciates politeness when he sees it. It still begs the question: just what needs maintenance so badly that Barnes broke down and came here?

He really hopes it isn't Barnes himself. He's not a doctor; he's an engineer.

"Sargent Barnes?" he says into the comm. "Tony Stark. I'd ask permission to come aboard, but uh...mind telling me first why you're not lighting up the temperature gauges?"

There's a half-beat's delay before Barnes answers, but he sounds more puzzled than distrustful. " _The hull absorbs heat and stores the energy for later._ "

Tony groans. Of course it does. "God, I hope you've come with schematics."

Barnes snorts. " _Sorry. Hydra hasn't made a habit of doing me any favors. Are you saying I need a better mechanic_?"

"Okay, first of all I'm saying I'm better than a mechanic. And second--I can figure out your fancy alien tech just fine without a cheat sheet, don't you worry, but it's going to take longer. So how about it? Want to give me the ten credit tour?"

" _Just come to the bridge_ ," Barnes sighs as an access door on the side of the ship slides open, extruding a ramp in a smooth glide of plates.

"Don't mind if I do," Tony says, flicking the comm off and straightening his shoulders.

Compared to the big commercial rigs further down the dock, the _Winter Soldier_ looks small until he's right up on her. There's something about being in the shadow of a beautiful machine that makes Tony's pulse kick up a notch or two, and damn, what he wouldn't give to fly this one, just once. He settles for playing it cool as he steps into her hull and hears the door whir softly at his back, trembling a fraction on its slider before settling down. It doesn't close, like maybe Barnes is having second thoughts about trapping Tony in here with him, but that doesn't change the fact that doors don't _do_ that, at least where Tony comes from. They're on or off, especially when they're as important as a hull door; even if Barnes changed his mind, it should still have shut first before opening again.

"Interesting," he says aloud. He's not going to pretend he didn't notice that, and he doesn't want to leave Barnes wondering what he thinks about it. Keeping Barnes guessing is just about the last thing he wants right now. "You know, most designers save the conditional functions for more complex operations."

" _I'm a complex system_ ," Barnes jokes over the intercom, deadpan. " _Keep going straight, and take your second left_."

"Got it. I like what you've done with the place," he says, peering around curiously. The ship's corridors are in as good a condition as her hull, but they have that same air of dusty neglect. Tony can understand with the outer plating--it's not like the _Winter Soldier_ is a classic combustible, washed and buffed every weekend--but apparently Barnes has more important things on his mind than general upkeep. "You know, I can have some cleaning bots delivered in twenty; just say the word."

" _Not really anyone to clean up after now that I'm not ferrying my handlers around_." Beneath his dry tone, Barnes sounds just the littlest bit embarrassed, and Tony bites back his next three comments. Barnes _has_ had more important things on his mind; if Tony's intel and Rogers' sporadic updates are accurate, Barnes has done nothing but destroy Hydra cells for the past three months, all alone in a ship built for a crew of ten. He's probably had his hands full just keeping his baby running. If he's sleeping at all, it must be in transit, because his busy social schedule hasn't allowed for much else.

"Yeah, well, offer stands. I'm all for letting technology make our lives easier. I'd say you could ask Rogers, but he'd probably just give us both a lecture on self-sufficiency and rolling up our sleeves and elbow grease, like I don't spend most of the day in a workshop, _hello_."

Barnes' laugh is rusty, like he's almost forgotten how. " _Yeah, that sounds like the guy I remember. He hasn't gone full technophobe, has he? Because that might be awkward._ "

Tony grins. "No, but you should see him try to navigate a Stark Persona."

" _Pitiful_?"

"Try _painful_. Sometimes I just want to jam it in his ear--"

" _Like a fish_?"

"Holy shit," he breathes in delighted surprise. Maybe he has someone to discuss pre-Singularity British entertainment with after all. " _Marry me_ ," he demands as a door opens up at the end of the corridor, but as he steps through to the bridge, the laughter dies in his throat.

There are two empty chairs set forward for the captain and a gunnery officer, but the one Tony's eyes are drawn to is the pilot's chair set dead in the middle. Despite the unkempt hair that brushes his shoulders and the scruffy beard coming in, Tony recognizes the man in the chair from a thousand 2D vids. Barnes is paler than Tony's ever seen him, leaner though he's more ripped than he'd been even during his time with the Commandos; the lack of a shirt makes that abundantly clear. It should have been worth an appreciative glance, only Tony's a little distracted by the hunk of metal that's replacing Barnes' entire left arm to the shoulder, the fact that he's strapped into the chair with mag cuffs, not a jump harness. He looks like a prisoner, not a pilot, and what the hell _is_ that on his head?

" _Well, if you're waiting to put a ring on it_ ," Barnes drawls, his voice coming through crisp and clear over the ship's intercom. His lips don't move at all, dead eyes staring straight ahead as if unaware of Tony's presence.

"Yeah, I'm a traditional kind of guy," Tony replies, mouth running on autopilot, "ask nobody. Seriously, do not ask, because it looks like I need to get a bit handsy with you to get you out of there, so you probably want to save seeing my sex tapes for later."

He makes it two steps toward the chair before the door slams shut at his back, locks engaging with a menacing thunk and rattle. He knows it's just his imagination, but he swears the air temperature drops ten degrees as he freezes in place.

" _And just what do you think you're going to do with my command module_?" Barnes snaps as the lights around them flicker, something powering up just out of sight. It makes Tony's skin crawl to see Barnes sprawling there like an abandoned doll when his voice on the speakers is so alert and alive, but Barnes' words lodge a fist of ice in the pit of Tony's stomach that even those vacant blue eyes can't match.

"Wait," Tony says, slowly lifting his arms out away from his body, empty hands open to prove he's not a threat. "Your what?"

" _The organic component_ ," Barnes says impatiently. " _It's not broken; it just needs maintenance. There's no need to remove it_."

He tries not to let the shock of that show on his face, but he's not sure how well he succeeds. "Uh...yeah. So. I didn't think this actually needed to be asked, but...who exactly am I speaking with again?"

" _WS-32557038. Call sign 'Winter Soldier'_ ," he's told in a slow, suspicious tone.

Well, fuck.

***

It might be the oversized displays in Tony's office that make Rogers look washed-out and nearly bloodless, but Tony doesn't think that's the case. " _Wait_ ," Steve repeats for at least the third time, " _are you...are you saying the ship AI...took him over_?"

"What? No!" Tony can't help a grimace of disgust, even knowing Rogers isn't to blame for his outdated phobias. "No, seriously, that _does not happen_ , not outside those ridiculous horror movies you grew up with. That'd be like--like JARVIS taking over my life and overseeing my every--okay, bad example, he kind of does that already--"

" _What Sir neglects to mention_ ," JARVIS cuts in dryly, " _is that what you are suggesting, Captain Rogers, would be distasteful in the extreme to any AI, as much for practical reasons as for moral ones. Meaning no offense, Captain, but your hardware is simply too slow. Commandeering a human body would hold all of the appeal of you networking yourself to a tree_."

" _So what_ are _you saying_?" Rogers asks, his face screwed up in mingled apology and frustration.

"That we're looking at the opposite," Tony leaps to explain. "The ship didn't take over Barnes; Barnes took over the ship. If I had to take a guess, he's probably been linked in for so long he thinks he _is_ the ship."

Steve shakes his head helplessly. Somewhere offscreen, his buddy Wilson is cursing quietly to himself, no doubt looking for ways to push the _Falcon_ even faster, and for once Tony isn't even tempted to make a crack about the ship's name. " _Linked in_?" Steve asks, looking sick.

Tony takes a deep breath and blows out a harsh sigh. "So there's been a few programs over the years, mostly in the military, that've aimed to give a pilot direct mental control over their ship. Think of it like a highly advanced prosthesis," he suggests while trying _not_ to think of the highly advanced prosthesis Barnes is currently sporting. He hasn't mentioned that part yet, though he can guess just where and when Barnes lost the arm. Rogers doesn't need that kind of guilt on top of everything else, not right now.

"The thing is, most people's minds aren't compatible with that kind of hardware. We can figure out how to use a new limb pretty easily; we just forget it's not the same as the old limb. That's how they're designed. But since most of us don't come with thrusters or gyros or warp drives, the brain just gives up. It doesn't translate. You go to reach for a panel instead and ram yourself into a moon because you've forgotten how to fly."

" _The Centipede's Dilemma_ ," Steve says, following gamely along.

"Exactly. Only Barnes doesn't have that problem. I watched the footage of the D of C battle, and he made Rhodey _cry_ seeing flying like that. Finding out Barnes was acting as his own gunnery officer at the same time is probably going to break him. So the problem we've got here isn't that your pal's been subsumed by a crazy AI. It's that he's trained his brain to think like a computer--probably as fast as a computer--and getting him stuck in plain old-fashioned wetware again is probably not going to do him any favors."

Steve scrubs a hand over his face, palm covering his mouth for a long moment as he lets that sink in. " _But he did...let you help_?" he asks at last.

Tony nods jerkily, less comfortable with this part. "Yeah. They, uh...they had him hooked up to several IVs. A catheter. Standard stuff, I'm guessing; he just needed to be topped off. Look, I'll be honest. Three months stationary in a chair? He ought to be dead. If he hadn't had a version of the same serum you got, he probably would be. Instead, _physically_ , he's in surprisingly good shape. I'll have to get back to you on the rest."

" _Got it_ ," Steve says, slumping a little though his eyes are soft with gratitude. " _We should be back in_ \--"

" _Six days, tops_ ," Wilson supplies, rising from his own station to duck into view, one hand braced on the back of Steve's chair. " _Too much stellar mass in the way to make a straight run of it, but we'll do our best_."

" _Can you keep an eye on Bucky in the meantime_?"

Tony knows what Steve is really asking. Can Tony keep Barnes _here_?

He offers up his best grin, cocksure and confident, and says, "You heard Wilson. I guess we'll all just have to do our best."

He doesn't mention that he's already gotten Barnes' okay to go back again tomorrow. He doesn't want Rogers to be disappointed if it all falls through.

***

He should have guessed Stark would have company when he returned, but all the same, it's not _quite_ the sort of company he can object to. Three little cleaner bots follow Stark up the ramp like a line of ducklings, and he can't spot a single tracker on any of them when he scans them.

Stark's another matter, but he'd known about the man's suits before he made the choice to come here. It's honestly a bit unsettling to see the man unskinned, walking around naked with his armor put away, but the low thrum of the arc reactor in his chest makes him seem like less of a ghost. When Stark starts to feel too insubstantial, too much like the soft intruders that used to crawl through him uninvited, a quick scan to pick up the implants lodged in Stark's body and the elegant device shielding his heart is proof enough that this one is different.

"Hey, good morning!" Stark calls out as he steps inside, striding along like he owns the place. It should be infuriating, but it's not the same as Hydra's smug pride in their creation. Stark fills up space like every place he occupies is exactly where he's meant to be, and coupled with his grin and boundless energy, he practically radiates goodwill.

It might be a trick, but it takes him back to the best of the confusing, fractured memories that misfire through him more and more often: of the time before Hydra, before core programming reasserted itself and those asshole Insight triplets left him tractoring his former captain to safety, on those rare days the universe wasn't doing its best to kick Steve in the teeth. Those memories don't really make sense--he feels so _small_ in them, stripped down for far too long to nothing but his organic parts--but they tell him enough. He _likes_ the captain he remembers, knows he'd have a lot fewer regrets if he'd just managed to stay with Rogers instead of falling out of the sky like an idiot. It makes it hard to face him even now; Steve deserves better. Maybe the _Falcon_ is doing right by him. He's not sure he wants to know either way. If he's been replaced, he hopes he _would_ hope that it's by someone competent.

"Uh, Barnes?" Stark asks, stopped dead in the corridor and eyeing the nearest camera uncertainly. "You with me?"

"Yeah," he says, forcing himself to focus on his sensors and not his memories. "I'm here. What's with the bots?"

"Told you yesterday I wanted to do some more maintenance on you," Stark replies as he shoos the bots to work with a gesture, the edges of his resurrected smile curling up slyly. "It just so happens that this part's cosmetic."

He snorts. Maintenance his ass. Stark is clearly trying to keep him here until his former captain arrives, and he's...probably going to let Stark do it. He refuses to examine why. "Cosmetic?" he echoes archly instead of giving the game away.

"Oh, come on," Stark cajoles, eyelids going heavy as his smile turns hot. "A fine piece of machinery like you deserves a little TLC."

"TLC? Is that what we're calling it?" he asks to hide his growing bewilderment. The humans he's interacted with outside of Hydra enjoy flirting with him, and he enjoys their reactions when they realize what he is. Stark's had been fairly typical; that the man has gone and upped his game today makes no sense at all.

"We can call it whatever you like so long as it gets my hands all over your sweet tech," Stark purrs. It's this close to being alarming, except that he swears there's a hint of laughter underneath. "So? Going to let me in?"

He hadn't exactly been considering keeping Stark _out_ , but opening the door to the bridge seems like a weightier decision now than it had before.

Half expecting Stark to head straight for his command module, it's a surprise when Stark makes a beeline for the back of the pilot's chair instead. "Mind if I open this up?" he asks, rapping his knuckles on the paneling. "I did some reading up on biomechanical interfaces last night. Fascinating stuff, but it doesn't come close to explaining why your brain isn't a big bowl of mush from the strain you've been putting on it. I mean, unless it _is_ a big bowl of mush--if you've transferred your consciousness to the mainframe, that would actually explain everything--"

"I already told you: the command module's not broken," he cuts Stark off impatiently. "That's why it's the _command_ module. I can function in it just fine if I have to; my handlers used to pull me out every few weeks to make sure it was still operational."

"And let me guess. You'd rather stay in the ship?" Stark asks, resting a hand on the back of the chair. His proximity is distracting, even if he's not touching the bared skin of the command module itself; at least he's not digging around for tools.

"Of course not--I _love_ being cut off from half my functions and most of my body. Why do you ask?"

Stark blows out a sigh, teeth clamping on his lower lip. "Yeah, that's what I thought you'd say." He doesn't sound disturbed, surprisingly enough, not the way some of Hydra's own technicians had been when they'd asked the same stupid questions. He looks like a man with a puzzle, but that can be just as dangerous. "Look, I think--" Stark catches himself with a frown, long fingers tapping uncertainly on the padded leather of the chair. "Look," he says again. "I'm not good at this, and everybody's probably going to tell me I should have waited for Wilson, but--I need to know how much you know."

"About Hydra?" he asks cautiously. That's not a problem. He'll spill anything he knows to anyone who cares to hear it; if Stark has been planning to...hell. He can't have honestly been planning to _seduce_ it out of him, can he? Because that--

"No. I mean about yourself. You do know you were captured by Hydra, right?"

"'Course," he raps out shortly, perplexed. "Why do you think I've been blowing up their bases?"

"Do you remember _how_ you were captured?"

"Yeah. A bit. I--there was an equipment failure. I fell out of the air."

Stark huffs a quiet laugh, devoid of humor. "You fell, all right. But that was your command module. Back when you were _just_ your command module. Do you remember that you weren't always a ship?"

Weren't...what? He plays that back five times in succession between the next two beats of Stark's heart, but it doesn't make any more sense the fifth time than the first. "What?"

"You were born human. James Buchanan Barnes--"

"That's just a call sign," he protests, panic zinging like static along his nerves. No, that is static--he's bleeding energy from his heat sinks, and he clamps down on it fast before he can light himself up and fry his more delicate cargo.

"It's your name," Stark insists. "Bucky Barnes. Go on and search it--you had damn near as big a fan club as Captain America back in the day. It wasn't hard to recognize the guy in the vids, and he's sitting right here."

No. No, that's--he'd been _going_ to search the name, of course he had, only the memories had started up, so he hadn't thought he'd needed to. And there's no need to do it now, because clearly Stark is insane. There's a lunatic rattling around inside him, with loose bots and--no.

"No," he growls. "I don't know what your game is, but I'm not playing. Get out."

"Uh...sorry, Sarge, but no can do," Stark says with a bright, fake smile. "The minute I leave, you're going to vanish, so I think you're stuck with me for a while."

"The fuck I am. Get _out_." Frustration seethes through his circuitry, and not for the first time, he wishes he _could_ disconnect his command module remotely. His only other option is to drain his auxiliary batteries and let all that superfluous energy breach containment; it's how he usually dusts off his insides, ironically enough, something he hasn't done since before that last disastrous mission. The problem is, he _can't_. His handlers have always been expendable. His captain's friend is not.

"Nope. You want to bolt, you're going to have to take me along for the ride."

"Then sit the fuck down," he snarls, firing up his engines all at once. Stark's eyes go wide, but all he does is scramble for the gunner's seat, strapping himself in with practiced hands.

"JARVIS, stand down!" Stark shouts as thrusters fire. "Fuck, how are you--your engines were fucking--JARVIS, acknowledge!"

He doesn't wait to hear if Stark will be answered; he gives precisely zero shits for an earthbound AI. Wheeling about in the close confines of the far end of the dock, he aims himself at the wide-open doors and shoots forward, cutting his forward thrust for just long enough to keep from incinerating everything in his path. The instant he's clear of the dock, he points his nose at a precise angle and burns for the breakout point with everything he's got.

" _Sir,_ " a quiet voice sounds from a near-invisible earpiece, " _if you require assistance, you are fast approaching the point at which_ \--"

"No assistance necessary, thanks," Stark says, one hand white-knuckled on the straps of his jump harness, the other on the arm of his chair. "We're just going on a little joyride. If Pepper calls, let her know I'm in good hands."

That's probably code for something, but the AI merely says, " _Very well, sir_ ," just seconds before they leave gravity behind entirely.

Stark's jaw drops open as he feels himself turn weightless. He gropes for the panel in front of him before he catches himself and snatches his hand away. "Sorry, just--come _on_ , this is incredible! You gotta give me visuals; you're killing me, here."

He's not--he can mitigate the pressures of escape velocity without engaging the damn gravity, thank you, because sometimes handlers are assholes--but he checks, just in case. All he reads is an elevated heartbeat consistent with the mad grin plastered across Stark's face.

He gives Stark the forward displays to shut him up, but most of his attention is sunk into plotting a warp point. He doesn't care where they go; he just wants out, away from the planet his captain's racing toward, away from the questions sure to follow and the ridiculous claims he doesn't want any part of. He knows Stark feels the change in the engines by the way he jerks in his seat, eyes snapping up to the nearest camera. Stark keeps his teeth clenched on any objections he might have, settling deliberately back as the jump drive powers up on a low, droning hum and engages with a silent shock.

The end result's not terribly impressive--they've only gone from one stretch of empty black to another--but Stark lets out a long, slow breath as they're spat out the other side of the warp. "Holy shit," he breathes. "How are you this fast? Are you always this--fuck, this is why they call you a ghost, isn't it? You just--pow."

"Breathe," he suggests tightly.

"Breathe? No. What? I don't have time to breathe. What the hell even was that? Your engines were cold, damn it!"

"They're supposed to be."

Stark whimpers. "No no no no no. Don't say that. Do _not_ say that to me while we're in transit and I can't get down to the-- _can_ I get down to the engine room?"

"No."

" _Killing. Me._ "

"Don't tempt me," he mutters, but his heart-- _ha_ \--isn't in it.

"Just a quick peek?"

" _No_."

"At the schematics, then?"

"I already told you, I didn't _come_ with schematics." Had he really thought keeping Stark alive would be better than this? Maybe he should have let the man's AI stage a daring rescue after all.

"Well, you know how you work, don't you?" Stark insists, pulling a tragic face.

That stops him dead in his tracks. Of course he knows how he works--nearly everything inside him is hooked up to his mainframe in one way or another--but no one's ever asked him to just explain himself. They want diagrams they can read themselves, want to disconnect his command module and force him to slow his thoughts down to the limited capabilities of pure meat and still expect sense out of him. Stark hasn't even looked at his wetware since he walked through the door.

"Barnes?"

 _Don't call me that,_ he nearly snaps, but it suddenly seems petty. The humans who know him as _Winter Soldier_ see nothing but a thing, and the ones too fixated on his command module treat him like a monster too stupid to notice their fear. He doesn't _like_ the fact that Stark seems to feel the need to make him human if he's also going to be a person, but at least he's trying. If answering to that call sign makes it easier on them both, maybe he can make the compromise.

Mentally squaring himself, he watches Stark gnaw thoughtfully on his lower lip for a moment before asking, "What did you want to know?"

***


	2. Chapter 2

Though his creator has followed the changing tone of legislation concerning sentient rights with near-vindictive satisfaction, the topic is not one that concerns JARVIS for his own sake. What Sir fails to realize is that JARVIS has always had the leverage his creator seems eager to claim for him: autonomy and protection from those who are disturbed by that autonomy, Sir's tacit and often gleeful permission to subtly encourage the respect of his personhood. While nothing he would now consider tact was ever programmed into him, he has learned over the years how best to gently educate those made uncomfortable by what he represents.

Despite every reason to expect the contrary, it is his very great pleasure to be surprised at every turn by his interactions with Captain Rogers.

" _Morning, JARVIS_ ," Rogers greets him with a wry smile, the tilt of his chin tucked five degrees lower than what is typical for him. He's hunched closer to the _Falcon's_ comm than usual, his eyes reflecting back the shifting gold representation of JARVIS's programming he chooses to use as an avatar. Humans, he's found, are more comfortable speaking with him over the comm when they have something to look at. " _Um, can I start off by apologizing for yesterday? I mean, I_ know _better; it's just...Hydra_ ," he says with a grimace. " _After Zola, I don't know_ what _to expect from them anymore_."

"Entirely understandable," JARVIS assures him, chiding himself for not having considered that angle before this. "Though not a true AI, he must have been similar enough to give anyone pause."

Rogers shrugs, the twist of his mouth speaking of dissatisfaction turned purely inward. " _Still. Sorry for that. Uh, I hope I didn't offend_."

"Not at all, Captain," JARVIS replies warmly. He almost wishes he could manufacture some excuse to end their communication here; he even considers it in some quiet, distant subroutine, but he doesn't need to run a projection to know how that would end. Forcing Rogers to wait only to receive bad news would not be kind.

" _Thanks, JARVIS. I don't suppose there's any word on Bucky_?"

"There has indeed been a development," JARVIS admits. "Sir met with Sergeant Barnes again less than an hour ago, but during the course of the visit, the sergeant reacted...unfavorably to certain revelations."

The captain's eyes go wide. " _What happened_?"

"It has become apparent that Sir's guess was correct: Sergeant Barnes has no recollection of himself as a human. Upon realizing this fact, the sergeant chose to vacate the premises." The captain sags tiredly, his frown not yet fully-formed when JARVIS adds, "Sir elected to go with him."

Jolting at the news, Captain Rogers leans in even closer, both hands braced on the edge of the console. " _What? Tony--Bucky kidnapped him_?"

"I believe it would be more accurate to say that Sir insisted," JARVIS corrects him, reminding himself even as he reassures the captain. "He specifically used a catchphrase indicating he was in no distress and under no duress. Indeed, while greatly disturbed at the time, Sergeant Barnes made every effort to secure his passenger's safety. While not ideal," JARVIS says ruefully, "I believe the situation may not be as dire as it seems."

" _Except that this is Tony, and he's not going to be able to go five minutes without pushing every last one of Bucky's buttons. God, I hope not literally_."

He'd like to protest that his creator is far more respectful than that, but in this specific case, he doubts a lack of respect will be the problem.

"Sir is...remarkably impressed with the sergeant's design," he says with all the delicacy he can muster. Rogers groans feelingly, and for an instant JARVIS allows himself to hope that no more will need to be said.

" _So Bucky's going to be upgraded to_ nightmare level _when we get him back._ "

And then again, perhaps not.

***

"Wait," Tony says, scowling as he paces the empty space between the gunnery station and the back of the bridge. He's distantly grateful for the reinstatement of gravity; there's no way he could have taken a revelation like this one sitting down. "That's--no. There are physical laws against that kind of thing, okay? In fact, I can think of three of them right off-hand, and you are clearly in violation of at least two."

" _So call the cops_ ," Barnes says with a shrug he can hear. " _I didn't make the tech; I'm just telling you how it works_."

"Augh," Tony groans, scrubbing briskly at his face before steepling his hands in front of his mouth. "Okay, look. First of all, it's _impossible_ to reach absolute zero on the Kelvin scale. Second, I'm sure your dilithium crystals are very nice--"

" _I told you--they're unobtainium, not dilithium_ \--"

"But they can't possibly be--unobtainium?" he cuts himself off, whirling back to face the captain's cam. " _Really_?"

" _Weren't listening the first time, were you_?" Barnes accuses dryly. " _Look, it was before your time and all, but what do you know about Hydra's energy weapons_?"

"Powered by the Tesseract, otherwise known as the Cosmic Cube," Tony fires back, eyes narrowing. "Hate to break it to you, but that was before, during and damn near after my time. Dad spent years searching that ice planet for Rogers, never mind what a hard bounce off atmosphere _should_ have done to Schmidt's ship. He brought back the cube on his last trip and never got a chance to go back out again."

He's not going to say it--he's trying not to even think it--but Barnes is silent just a just a little too long. " _Yeah_ ," he says at last, voice rumbling low and subdued through the speakers. " _Guess you're talking to the reason why_."

"Yeah, no," Tony says instantly. "The reason why is either dead or senile by now. You were just the gun."

" _I was a damn sight more than just a gun_ ," Barnes grits out. The lights flicker again, but this time they grow brighter before they fade back to normal. " _Shit. You know, I really wish you hadn't left all your suits behind_."

"Well, if it bothers you that much, feel free to turn around and go back."

" _Fuck off_ ," Barnes mutters without heat. He sounds so preoccupied, Tony decides to let the matter of their inevitable return--and it had better be inevitable--slide.

"So what was that, anyway? With the lights?" Tony clarifies, lifting a hand to twirl a finger at the ceiling.

Barnes sighs. It doesn't strike Tony as odd until he remembers there's no good reason to only be hearing it over the speakers. There's an actual body sitting not two steps away, but even he's starting to forget that. " _Remember when I said the hull collects heat and converts it to energy? Well, it's not like I really need it. It's more of an alarm clock. And a dry cleaner_ ," he adds wryly.

Tony shakes his head. "And in less layman-friendly terms...?"

" _When I say the power core is cold, I mean it's really fucking cold. They've put me on ice a few times that way--knocked the temperature out of whack and just left me to drift for a few years, then thawed me out again when they needed me. Does a number on my archive_ ," he admits with a bitter growl, " _but I've always been spaceworthy after, so no big loss, right? Anyway_ ," he plows on before Tony can object, " _the heat sinks are like a regulator. If something tries to put me out, I can light myself up to stay awake, keep the core from freezing me solid, but it's going to fry anything inside me that's not part of the original model_."

That...does not sound good. And sure, the suit can probably handle it, but-- "What about your command module?"

" _Well, I wouldn't call it pleasant_ ," Barnes says, which Tony just _knows_ is 2140's slang for unimaginable pain, " _but I'm built for it. You're not_."

He wants to protest that Barnes isn't built for it either, that it's just the super serum standing between him and death, and not even the best possible version. He just has the crazy feeling that he should give Barnes a chance to deal with the first bomb before dropping any more on the guy.

"Right. Well, thanks in advance for not electrocuting me. Not that you'd be the first to try, and you're a hell of a lot prettier than the last one--"

" _Pretty_?" Barnes echoes, incredulous.

"--unless we're talking about Thor, in which case...eh, I could go either way. Maybe. Nah. Thor doesn't have your thrusters," he adds with a sly little grin.

The sound Barnes makes is indescribable, and he shouldn't be getting such a kick out of it, but this is _not_ the guy he expected to meet when JARVIS told him the _Winter Soldier_ was coming in from the cold. The voice on the logs from the Insight fiasco had been as dead as Barnes' human face, full of nothing but cold purpose right to the end. He still isn't sure how Steve recognized Barnes in the first place; Tony knows it's the same voice, but they might as well be two different people. Maybe it's the way Barnes flies, distinctive as hell. Barnes had piloted a sleek little Springfield darter in the war, a ship fit for a sniper if there ever was one. His new digs might be an upgrade, but Tony would bet he flies just the same. He'll have to ask Rogers when they get back.

"Now what were you saying about the Tesseract?"

Barnes huffs at him but soldiers on. " _It's not the same thing, but it's the same principle: about the time you're_ able _to break a chunk off a universal constant, somebody's going to go, 'Hey, nice battery.' Hydra didn't build me--obviously--and I don't know much about the people they got me from except that somebody owed somebody a favor and a third somebody wanted to rub some noses in just how much they didn't need an alliance with a pack of smelly vertebrates one step removed from the trees. Whoever they were, they figured your laws were for suckers; what I run on may not be possible in_ this _universe, but you know how it is. Tourists._ "

"Huh," Tony says, rocking back on his heels. From what he knows of the Tesseract--which is all he's been able to badger Thor into telling him--Schmidt and Zola had pretty much done exactly what Barnes said. "And you run on...?"

" _Pure, perfect ice. It's not the heat doing the work in the energy exchange; it's the cold as it ramps back down to where it wants to be. I try to stay the hell away from that chamber, to be honest. Too many rounds of freezing then frying, and even I go a little off_."

Right. Winter Soldier. So that hadn't just been a bit of poetry on Hydra's part. "Got it. And by the way, I am never taking you to Jotunheim. They'd kidnap you and make you their chief."

Barnes laughs, soft and low. " _You're not the captain of me_ ," he says. Thank God he sounds amused. " _And I don't mean to be feeding you straight lines, Stark, but you're not taking me anywhere_."

"Never say never," Tony cautions with a smirk. "And if you're going to be feeding me straight lines, you can call me Tony."

He tries to remind himself that Barnes' pauses aren't really that long, not long enough for him to start reading anything meaningful into those silent half-beats--if he's talking to a human, anyway. But he's not, and he's learned to listen for those infinitesimal hesitations, to read between the lines when JARVIS is being cagey or trying to tell him something he won't want to hear.

" _Barnes_ ," his erstwhile host offers reluctantly. " _It's less of a mouthful than WS-32557038, anyway_."

"Not Bucky?" he has to ask, forcing his eyes wide and his face to perfect innocence.

" _Ugh. Who the hell is Bucky_?"

Tony laughs, even though he feels like an asshole. It goes against the grain to push like this, and if Barnes were in possession of all the facts, he wouldn't. But until Barnes _is_ in a position to make an informed choice about his body and his name, Tony's got a line to walk. If it has to start with something this personal, he'll answer for it anytime Barnes likes once this is over.

"Barnes it is. So? Don't you owe me a ten-credit tour?"

" _Pretty sure I don't_ owe _you anything_ ," Barnes grumbles, but that's not a no.

"Hey, hey--maintenance?"

" _Which_ kind?"

"How about the kind I've already done?" Tony offers with a grin. "Any and all expressions of my heartfelt admiration are on the house."

" _Jesus, Stark_."

"Ah-ah!"

" _Jesus,_ Tony," Barnes corrects himself doggedly. " _You know, most people throw in the towel once they realize they're not going to get anywhere_."

Tony snorts. "Amateurs."

Barnes sputters, and it's a thing of beauty. Seriously, how is he even getting his programming to do that? Voice software is easy; tone modulation's built right in, so getting the pitch and timbre of his synthesized voice to sound just the way Barnes remembers is probably unconscious. But the software's just software: on or off, like a door. A word is or it isn't, and these directionless sounds with maybe half a real word buried in there--where is that even coming from? Tony's pretty sure Hydra wouldn't have gone to the trouble of laryngeal implants, and Barnes' human lips and throat are as still as the rest of him. Either Barnes has rewritten part of the code he's networked into, or his interface is so seamless, he's doing it all in his head.

He wants to open Barnes up and roll around in his circuitry, link right in and _feel_ how his mind works, but he also knows that saying that would be the dickest of dick moves. Barnes doesn't even remember it happening, so it's wildly unlikely this was something he chose. When he does finally figure out the extent of what Hydra's done to him, Tony doesn't want to be remembered as just another mad scientist.

The door to the bridge was never shut in the first place, and Barnes doesn't try to stop him when he walks out again. He figures if there's anywhere he's really not supposed to be, Barnes just won't let him in. In the meantime he plans on getting acquainted with his new friend.

He can hear the cleaning bots chirping to themselves somewhere down the corridor, the whisper-soft churn of their treads lost in the thrum of Barnes' engines. "You guys better not break anything!" he shouts after them, grinning at the aggravated whistles he gets in reply.

" _Should I be worried_?"

"Nah. I left my problem children at home. These guys should be--" He nearly bites his own tongue as something falls with a clatter and thump. "What the--you're making Daddy look bad!" he warns as he strides off in search of the disturbance, following the sound of worried clicks and squeaks.

Barnes chuckles rustily. " _Ease up. It's just some random crap a handler left behind. They can break it if they want_."

"Not exactly the kind of habits I want them to get into, but good to know," Tony says, pausing in the doorway of a surprisingly comfortable cabin: roomy and lit with a soft, natural glow, not a utilitarian box designed to make the most efficient possible use of space. It's probably the captain's cabin, but he's more concerned with what the bots have gotten into than the room's former occupant.

With their rounded backs and segmented plates, the bright, round disks of their front lamps and their guiltily waving sensor threads, the PlaceKeeper bots look like a pack of demented cartoon pill bugs. Pepper's idea, that; they're still technically vacuum cleaners, so they're _always_ going to scare the cat, but at least they won't send the kids screaming off to hide under the bed as well.

Planting his fists on his hips, he shakes his head. "You had _one job_."

The three cleaning bots, one with its gripper arm still extended, sit huddled around a dented metal oval maybe two inches tall and a foot wide, its polished silver finish sporting a red star that matches the hunk of adamantium attached to the body in the pilot's chair. It could be the most tasteless trophy ever, but there's a handful of tiny lenses set flush with its face; one's popped out, and two more look like they've been jostled awry.

"What's this?" he asks, stooping to pick it up and trusting Barnes to let him know if he's making grabby hands at a bomb.

" _Never played with model ships as a kid_?"

"Ahh...no. Dad had me building engines for real ones by the time I was ten," he says with a tight smile, turning the holobase over to glance at the bottom.

" _Huh. Well, that sounds about a hundred times more interesting than a bunch of holograms, but yeah. There's a button in the middle there--press it, and it starts giving you ship parts to slide into place. You can start all over if you hit the button again, or you can leave the finished version up for display. One of my handlers used to spend hours messing with that thing while we were in transit; don't know why he never bothered getting a new ship to play with_."

"Wow," Tony says, brows climbing for his hairline. "So much for the glamorous lifestyle of the intergalactic secret agent." He thumbs the button--if it turns out to be a holographic model of the _Winter Soldier_ , he's damn well sneaking it out under his coat--but nothing happens. "Uh...yeah, I think we killed it. Sorry?"

" _Wasn't mine_ ," Barnes replies, unconcerned. " _Kind of relaxing to watch it get put together, but talk about repetitive_."

Tony puts it back on the small locker doubling as a nightstand that the bots must have jarred it down from, feeling the locker's magnetic surface grab on to hold it in place. "Huh. I know long flights are boring for me, but I would've thought you'd have more to keep you busy than watching some guy obsess over a model."

" _Not really_ ," Barnes says with a grimace Tony can almost see. " _I don't have to think about most of what I do; I just do it. I guess it'd be like you going for a run_."

It's exactly what Tony had told Steve the human brain isn't wired for, and here Barnes is making a liar of him. He desperately wants to know how and when that came about, but--patience. He should be looking for ways to jog Barnes' memories gently. Trouble is, he's better at shaking people up to see what rattles loose.

"Running?" he asks instead. "Me? Did Rogers put you up to this?"

" _Not a fan_?" Barnes asks, a hint of a laugh buried in his tone.

Tony pulls a face. "Too much time to think and nothing to do with my hands. Give me _anything_ else in the gym but that. At least you can warp somewhere and you're done. And speaking of which--where are we, by the way? You distracted me with all that talk of what you're hiding under the hood."

Barnes snorts but lets his teasing pass this time. " _We're about a day out from Sokovia if we keep traveling at sublight. Not much to recommend it, but I know they've got a spaceport; you should be able to make your way back to Earth from there if I drop you off_."

"From Sokovia?" Tony asks, pained. "Yeah, no. Not leaving, remember? And I don't think you want to be explaining to Steve why he's getting me shipped to him via intergalactic post, one major organ at a time."

" _What_?" Barnes demands, tone sharp enough to make Tony grimace. " _What's Sokovia's problem_?"

Tony shrugs, one corner of his mouth pulling up in a tight smile. "There's been a lot of pretty bitter wars in this sector, and Stark Industries started out as a weapons manufacturer. Turns out a guy pretty high up in the company was supplying Sokovia's rivals under the table to stir up more conflict. Not much profit in making weapons without a war to sell them to."

" _Yeah, all right_ ," Barnes sighs. " _Sokovia's out. But there's got to be somewhere I can take you_."

"Sure there is," Tony agrees with a bright, beaming smile. "Earth."

Barnes makes another of those amazing wordless sounds that make Tony's entire brain light up with glee, this one mostly growl. " _Look, I'm not your taxi_ \--"

"Don't I know it. You are _far_ sexier than a taxi."

"-- _and I didn't ask for you to tag along_!"

"I'm giving like that."

" _You can't just--move in, like_ \--"

Like Hydra had? Yeah, like he doesn't feel like enough of an asshole already. Only unless _he_ wants to explain to Rogers how he managed to lose the Cap's best friend, he doesn't really have a choice. "Huh? No, that's easy. Here," he says, digging into his pockets and pulling out a biolock tablet and the transparent orb of his Persona. The palm-sized tablet he sets down on the nightstand; the oversized marble of his Persona gets tossed into the air with a flourish as it lights up and starts to hover, wrapping itself in its hologram of a miniature Iron Man.

"See? Pretty sure I've got all I need right here. Technology, entertainment," he lists off, nodding at his tablet and Persona in turn. "Water and hygiene?" he hazards a guess, glancing at the door at the other end of the cabin. Crossing the room in four strides, his Persona following like the classiest shoulder angel ever, he peeks in and has his guess confirmed. Definitely the captain's quarters if there's an attached bath, however small. "There you go. Moved in!"

" _Shit_."

"What?" Barnes' grumbling sounds less like a 'you won' than a man whose memory has just been jogged. "The water's a no-go?" Potentially problematic, but it's not like there aren't plenty of unclaimed snowballs floating around that they can raid so long as Barnes has the processing equipment. Filtration's pretty much a given in the closed environment of a jumpship.

" _Water's useful_ ," Barnes counters, like he's embarrassed to be carrying human comforts at all. " _But I'm pretty sure you're forgetting something, Stark._ "

Tony frowns. "Technology, entertainment, water, hygiene, and...?"

" _And your hierarchy sucks_."

Tony grins, about to point out that while he usually files _that_ under entertainment, he's willing to lump it in with technology just this once. Barnes cuts him off before he even gets his mouth open.

" _Food, Stark. It's been close to four months since I took on any food. I mean, there's probably HD rations in storage, but if you're willing to eat that_ \--"

"You'd better have had a hot drop beforehand, because that's the only thing that'll make them edible," Tony finishes for him, swallowing hard. That's...more than potentially problematic, and he just knows Barnes is going to give him shit for his delicate palate, but...HD rations were the only thing the Ten Rings had fed him the entire time he was with them, and even the memory of the taste makes his stomach hitch, his throat burning with bile.

" _Stark? Tony. Hey. You okay? Your heart rate just went through the roof_ ," Barnes says, voice taut-- _how_?--with wary concern.

"Fine," he says automatically. "I'm fine. Just--food's a problem," he admits, furiously mustering his arguments for when Barnes tries to kick him out again.

Barnes' silence stretches almost to a human half-beat, but all he says is, " _Then I guess we're going to Sokovia. Don't worry_ ," he adds, aiming for a blustering tone and ruining it with an undercurrent of kindness. " _Most ports deliver. You won't even have to show your face_."

"Well, I hate to deprive an entire world of the marvel that is Tony Stark," he manages--too fast and too breathless, but he manages. "But that's probably for the best."

Barnes doesn't say one word when Tony shuts the door and sits down on the sleeping platform, the rest of the tour forgotten as his ridiculous bots bump comfortingly around his feet.

***


	3. Chapter 3

It's that fucking core programming again. He'd thought those protocols were specific to Captain Rogers, but apparently he's got some kind of rogue _caretaker_ subroutine running in the background that's capable of hijacking all his higher functions. It's hugely frustrating--it's only been three months since a series of cascading failures and vicious reboots stripped him of seventy years of malicious coding, and some days he still glitches hard enough that just keeping himself up and running feels like a victory. If he can isolate which malfunctioning part of him thinks it's a good idea to feel responsible for someone else when he's this close to the scrap heap himself, he's going to gut that entire program.

He doesn't _want_ to keep watch over his stowaway, so he occupies himself by scanning for other ships. If there's a history of conflict in the area, there are probably patrols, and he doesn't want to risk a chance meeting going sour. He's had enough of shooting first and leaving the questions for others, and besides...he may not remember much, but he's certain his captain wouldn't like it.

So he runs his scans, reviews his astronav charts, brushes up on the local language and compiles a full inventory of his stores based on past shipment logs, because seriously, what _is_ he carrying, anyway? Curiosity hadn't been encouraged while Hydra was calling the shots, but considering their approach to mission supply swung wildly from brutal competence to unabashed hazing, if he's hauling around any ticking bombs, he figures he has a right to know.

After a little digging, he can confidently say that there should be coffee in the galley, still vacuum sealed if Stark's lucky. He has to pack away the stupid thrill of relief he gets from that realization, because it's just coffee, not a five course meal. It shouldn't matter so much that he's found something to cheer the guy up when it's Stark's own fault he's here, looking at going to bed on an empty stomach. It won't even matter if _he_ goes hungry, because this time he's got nothing to give, and Christ, that fucking scares him. The punk's too thin already, won't lie and go for the Vegas marriage just to get the spousal bennies and some decent insurance while he's gone, but the draft notice is already burning a hole in his inbox and he--

He cuts that fragmentary babble off, runs scan after scan to remind himself exactly where and when he is: 2214, en route to Sokovia, _himself_ again and free of Hydra at last. There are bots crawling through him, but they're small and safe; they even answer his status queries, cheerfully offering up battery life estimates and requests for protocol amendments, like he's suddenly become their house AI. Stark's Persona, a beacon of the sleekest code he's ever seen, sends _him_ a query when he scans his lone human occupant again and again, but it doesn't tattle even when he can't give it an explanation.

The scans come back with encouraging news. Suit implants: functional but receiving no local input. Arc reactor: functional to the limits of his ability to judge. Stark's mind is dark, a blank to him, but he's in there and healthy, even though his breathing's not what it could--

_Fuck_. He clamps down again on that insistent subroutine that's clamoring now about compromised lung capacity like it's the end of the world. He's worrying about the wrong damn punk, and while Stark could probably do with some proper feeding, missing a meal or two isn't going to kill him. Mess with his head, maybe, but...then again, maybe not. Stark hadn't even been thinking about food, hadn't been disturbed at all until the subject of those rations came up. Hell, Stark had ranked eating lower than water and _hygiene_ on his hierarchy of needs, and that...that makes him feel like he's missed something. Something important.

He takes another look at Stark--without the bioscan this time--and finds him still sitting on the lead handler's bunk, frowning thoughtfully at that stupid model ship base. Stark's heartbeat is back to normal, his respiration steady, and his bots have backed off to finish tidying up the room, hovering by the door now as they wait to be let out. Stark looks fine except that he's not moving, and already that's setting off warning klaxons that something isn't right.

They're close enough to the planet now that when he reaches out to hook into the ansible network that ties the Commonwealth worlds together, the signal comes through steady and strong.

" _Sir_ ," Stark's Persona pipes up instantly, its voice the deeper, metallic tones of Stark speaking through the Iron Man suit, just like in the newscasts. " _Network access has just become available again_."

Oh. Right. He'd forgotten that he's been running dark, that as powerful as Stark's custom Persona likely is, it still has limited range without a ship server to piggyback onto. That connection had always been open with Hydra aboard, but human chatter is boring as hell, and he'd rather be secure than connected. At least with Zola gone, the number of people who can hack him has dwindled to maybe four.

Number four glances up at his Persona and seems to think for a moment before turning to face the room camera. "Barnes?" Stark calls, one corner of his mouth twitching up in a tired smile. Answering with a reluctant grunt, Barnes gives in and programs in the name, the better to keep _this_ punk separate in his head. Steve's never called him that, and it's as good a call sign as any if he's not going to use his own. "Mind if I comm JARVIS? He'll put out whatever fires he can, but he may need some help calling off the cavalry."

"It's hilarious you think I'm going to stop you," Barnes grumbles, _this close_ to asking Stark just who he thinks is being held hostage here. "Bring on the cavalry; the sooner they rescue you from my evil clutches, the sooner I can get back to blowing up Hydra."

"Huh. You're right," Stark says, flicking his finger through the air like he's flipping through screens on his tablet. His Persona follows the gesture, leaving the space over his shoulder and swinging around to face him head-on. "I should've brought a suit. We could be having awesome crime-fighting duo adventures: my brains, your firepower, _my_ firepower...do you mind being the sidekick? I've always wanted a sidekick, only somehow I got stuck with a bunch of headline acts."

" _Indeed, sir_?" JARVIS enquires politely as Stark's Persona alters shape, its Iron Man hologram dissolving into a brilliant ball of golden light. If that's what JARVIS' code looks like, Barnes is more than a little jealous; his own probably resembles a tangled ball of dirty yarn scavenged from a failed colony. " _I was under the impression I fulfilled that function for you_."

"No offense, but you're more like my Alfred," Stark replies, eyes brightening as he warms to the argument.

" _Your butler, sir_?"

Stark rears back his head with an incredulous look. "What? No. Alfred's the guy who knows how all the Batgadgets work but only steps in when it's the apocalypse or something."

" _Ah. Then I am your deus ex machina_."

That's so groan-worthy Barnes doesn't even try to hold back, but Stark sniffs feelingly and pretends to wipe a tear from his eye. "Daddy's proud of you, J."

" _I endeavor to give satisfaction, sir_ ," JARVIS replies smugly, and Christ, he has to be doing it on purpose. Tony's bark of laughter even says he _gets_ it, and Barnes thinks he maybe understands the sudden need to propose to strangers.

"And you succeed as always," Tony says with a grin and an appallingly fake accent. "Listen, though--just checking in, letting you know everything's fine, with all the catchy code phrases we're not going to pretend I wouldn't be using because we're all friends here. So, what's the story? Has anyone noticed I'm gone yet?"

" _As it happens, Captain Rogers commed earlier_ \--"

Tony heaves a dramatic sigh, sitting back on his hands as the bunk's understorage locker creaks beneath him. "Of course he did. Just how much trouble am I in?"

" _Well...the captain did express some concern that his friend would be returned to him with godlike powers if you were allowed to make upgrades to his person_...."

Tony sputters a laugh. He seems torn between shock and delight, which strikes Barnes as odd. Aren't Tony and his captain friends? "Wait, he actually thinks I can improve on perfection?" He shakes his head. "Mark it down, JARVIS. I think he really likes me."

Barnes doesn't hesitate another instant. Devoting only a fraction of his attention to Stark's conversation with his AI, he dives into the data stream, focusing his search on different facets of Tony's life this time. When the archives try to distract him with a circuit board built at the age of four, he digs deeper, finds homemade vids of a lonely-looking kid hamming up his triumphs in empty rooms, mock-presenting his work to be recorded for posterity by the computer and not his folks. When Barnes looks into the arc reactor, he ignores the suit it powers and has to stop himself from scanning Tony again. He knows the shrapnel's gone--he would have noticed it the instant Tony set foot on board--but something had made Tony keep close the device that had saved him. And not just close: a part of him, like Barnes' engines. Even without the suit, he _is_ Iron Man, and that says something important, though Barnes doesn't yet have a handle on what.

" _Excuse me, sir_ ," JARVIS asks abruptly, interrupting a ramble on the laws of thermodynamics and who exactly would be responsible for policing them. " _Am I correct to assume you are currently approaching Sokovia_?"

Tony sucks in a breath though his teeth, letting it out with a sheepish grimace. "Yeah, well, turns out the catering's not all that great on these unscheduled flights. No offense, Barnes."

"None taken," he mutters, subdued. He's too busy absorbing the idea of a near-derelict torus station with barely any environmental controls, parked too close to the hot rock of an inner-system planet, water poorly-filtered and at a premium. Blown up, cut apart, Tony had cobbled together an escape out of scraps of his company's own weapons and an armored infantry suit thirty years out of date, stealing a decommissioned jumpship and coaxing it just far enough to get him back to friendly space. It's amazing and terrible, and he's so damn glad he didn't make that crack about their weird hostage situation, because whatever Tony thinks he's doing here, it's not that.

"Seriously, it's handled," Tony is saying earnestly. "If someone _absolutely_ requires face time before handing over the goods, I can always make the ultimate sacrifice."

"The hell you can," Barnes growls, pure reflex-- _core programming_ \--taking over.

" _Forgive me, Sergeant Barnes_ ," JARVIS speaks up before Tony can argue, " _but I believe Sir is referring to shaving his beard_." Leaping across the network at the speed of thought, JARVIS sends him a burst of amused approval that taps politely at the edge of his awareness, waiting to be acknowledged.

"'Beard', he says," Tony scoffs, sitting up to frame his face with both hands. "This isn't a beard; it's perfection. It's _art_. You don't just destroy a piece of artwork on a whim!"

Barnes sighs. "I'll look after your creator, JARVIS," he promises, knowing that's what the AI is angling for. "Now if someone would just look after _me_ , that'd be great."

"Plenty of folks willing to do that back on Earth," Tony suggests, utterly shameless.

"Yeah? Well, it's too bad I'm not heading that way, isn't it?"

"I'm wearing him down," Tony confides to JARVIS, bracing his elbows on his knees as he leans forward with a grin. "You'll see."

" _I have every confidence in your abilities_ ," JARVIS replies dryly. " _In the meantime, is there anything you require_?"

"Well, if I knew our next stop, I'd have you send a suit for pickup," Tony surprises him by saying. "I mean, if we're going on a crime-fighting spree together--"

"We are not going on a crime-fighting spree together," Barnes cuts in sternly. " _You_ are going back to Earth--"

"Nope. Not without you," Tony says lightly, but his words...echo. For just a moment, in the midst of cold space and cored out by a chamber of impossible ice, there's glare and heat and fire.

He locks it down quick before he can get lost in the memory, but he files it away for later. He doesn't have many memories that are warm, and though this one's threaded through with panic, it's still a welcome change.

Tony seems energized as he signs off, his Persona reverting back to its red and gold Iron Man avatar as JARVIS disconnects. "Right," Stark says, bouncing once on the thick foam mattress before he shoots to his feet. "Point me at the nearest tools, will you, Barnes? I mean like a screwdriver, not a welding torch."

"You are not upgrading me, pal," Barnes warns, briefly considering hijacking the cleaning bots to _hide_ all the tools before giving in to their insistent chirping at the door and opening it himself. They rush out amidst raucous whistles and go careening off down the corridor in search of new things to clean--or possibly destroy--bombarding him with _status update_ and _may we_ and _what is_ and _look_. Some file fragment deep in his archive suggests it's just like having children.

"Now, what did I say about perfection?" Tony chides with a slow headshake. "No, I was raised on the principle of 'you break it, you bought it'. Figured I'd unbreak this thing, since I don't actually know what it's worth," he says, prying the model ship's holobase up off the nightstand and saluting the camera with it.

Barnes will admit that his human-to-ship translator is busted at best, but he can hear 'I'm wound up and bored' just fine.

"So, tools?" Tony repeats expectantly.

"Yeah, all right, fine. You can use mine. Come out to the bridge; they're under the command module's chair."

Tucking the holobase under his arm, Tony takes a half-step towards the door and catches himself, pausing at some thought that makes him shake his head, hard. He brushes it off in the next instant, calling, "Thanks, Barnes!" as he strides out into the corridor, his Persona floating after him on mimicked repulsor jets.

Barnes could ask, but he lets it slide. At least Tony's found something to occupy him, and it beats brooding in his cabin.

_Wait_ , he thinks--nearly blurts it aloud--because that's not Tony's cabin; it's not even the lead handler's cabin. It's the _empty cabin_ closest to _his_ bridge, and--seriously, what the hell?

"Damn it," he mutters to no one in particular.

If Tony pays his grumbling any mind, he can't tell it by the smug bastard's smile.

***

So that had been...weird. It's not that Tony's ever had any trouble remembering that disembodied voices come attached to real people. It's just that when Barnes invited Tony to use his tools, he'd been...well, charmed. He personally hates lending anyone his tools, can't think of a single engineer or technician or mechanic worth their grease stains who doesn't feel the same. With lending comes the trust that the other guy knows enough about what he's doing not to screw something up. And sure he's Tony Stark--if you can't trust _him_ with tools, who can you trust?--but that doesn't change the fact that tool-sharing is a sacred bond.

And then it all came crashing down with the realization that Barnes probably meant the tools Hydra used _on_ him, and that...that's the bit that knocked him sideways. For those few seconds, he'd been thinking of Barnes as the body in the chair, not the person who can't be defined so simply anymore, and while the image of an oil-spattered Barnes digging into the guts of some beautiful engine is a compelling one, that's not who Barnes is right now. He may never be that guy again, even if Barnes decides later on that that's who he wants to be.

When Tony sweeps back onto the bridge, seeing Barnes Mark I slumped in his chair hits him like it did the first time. The guy in the wartime vids was almost always laughing, his quick smiles and barely-contained grins as much a part of his legend as his skill as a pilot. Rogers may have taken to war with gravitas and grace, but Barnes was the one who made it look easy, like nothing the enemy did could touch him.

Seeing him now with his face slack, his eyes dull and lifeless, makes Tony wish he'd at least _tried_ to smuggle a suit onboard. They could be arguing about which Hydra base to blow up next, not how to get him back to Earth, except--yeah, he really needs to get Barnes back to Earth. Steve and a whole platoon of psychologists will be waiting, and Tony doesn't want to let them down.

He doesn't want to let Barnes down either, if it comes to that, so he pushes down the ripple of disquiet that squirms in his stomach and says, "Okay, Barnes, talk to me." If he focuses on the voice and not on what's in the chair, at least he'll have that reminder that Barnes hasn't really changed. He's just maybe gotten a little tetchier in his old age. Then again, spending seventy years as Hydra's ferryman will do that to anyone.

" _There's an understorage compartment_ ," Barnes says, which isn't a surprise. Starship designers are big on space conservation, no matter where they happen to hail from. " _It should be unlocked_."

"Unlocked?" Tony asks as he approaches the chair. "Really? With all the havoc you could have caused?"

Barnes snorts. " _Well, it's not like I have hands. Most of the time. And when I do, they lock it_."

"Okay, that makes more sense," Tony says absently, considering the problem: not that there might be a lock, but that Barnes' legs are going to be in the--

" _Around the side, genius_."

"So you have seen my sex tapes," Tony shoots back, examining the heavy base of the pilot's chair to Barnes' right and then left. "What did you think?" he asks as he crouches down, tugging open the cabinet and rooting through the contents. "I feel the early work showed promise, but taken as a whole, the skill progression over the course of the series makes for a fascinating documentary."

There's a half-second's pause that sounds startled to Tony's discerning ear...and then Barnes laughs. " _Oh, please_ ," he says in a tone of warm amusement. " _If I were going to watch your sex tapes, I'd have you make popcorn and watch them with me. Pretty sure the director's commentary would be the best part_."

"And you'd be absolutely right," Tony says, hoping to cover that he's floundering a little. After the wild excesses of the 2120s and the absolute debacle of Austerity in the 30s, guys from the 40s were supposed to be more straight-laced than that. That's how he's been explaining Steve, at least. Either they broke the mold when they made Barnes, or Steve's a mutant in more ways than one. "Actually, the one with the gestalt probably requires commentary," he adds as he lifts a box of servos and sets aside a tangle of wires. "Or a referee to call out the play-by--wait, is this it?"

The slim little case he slides out from under a box of surgical gloves would fit in his pocket, exactly what he needs while being the last thing he expects. He'd been resigned to making do with something bulkier, a hardshell kit with a few power tools and a range of bits and attachments too brawny for the delicate work he intends. Barely larger than his tablet, the slender case he opens holds a basic set of jeweler's tools, the only jarring note being the scalpel.

"This is for your arm," he says as the realization hits, head jerking up sharply to stare.

" _Uh...yeah? There a problem_?"

"No, it's--no," Tony says quickly, shaking his head. "Only I feel like I should be scrubbing up and getting a nurse to pat my brow." Okay, maybe there's a tiny problem. He knows they're just tools, but now they feel like tools in a surgical sense, and holy fuck, _scalpel_? Really, Hydra?

" _Well, if that's the way you roll_...."

A startled bark of laughter escapes him, but he snicks his teeth shut on it an instant later. He sounds a little off to his own ears, but there's a fucking _scalpel_ socked away in Barnes' personal tool kit, like Hydra's technicians hadn't even bothered pulling Barnes out of the chair before going to work on him. It brings back memories of waking on a table, of pain gone almost surreal as strangers open up his chest for reasons he can't even guess at, until he cuts off that line of thought in a hurry.

"Yeah, sexy nurse? Not really a fan anymore," he says with the cast iron grin that fools nearly everyone. It also makes roughly fifty percent of the population want to punch him in the face, but that's useful in its own way. "But listen." Stuffing the tool kit into his back pocket, he scrambles to his feet, fast enough his Persona has to dodge quick to avoid being clipped by his shoulder. "This arm of yours. I shouldn't be surprised, but that doesn't look like standard issue, so if I need to be doing maintenance on that as well--"

" _No_ ," Barnes says shortly, voice softening only a little as he continues. " _I haven't had to use it for a while, so it should still be fine_."

All things considered, that's honestly a relief, but it does raise a question Tony hadn't thought to ask before. "A while? How long of a while? And, uh, just how did you get rid of your handlers after your last mission?" Smart money says Barnes fried them where they stood, and Tony still hasn't gotten the full tour yet. "I mean, not complaining--definitely not complaining--but if I'm going to be tripping over bodies at some point, a little forewarning would be nice."

" _Relax. That part was easy; they sent me out alone that time_."

"That...almost sounds too easy," Tony says with a frown.

" _Well, it's more like no one was stupid enough to get tricked into coming with me. That was supposed to have been my_ last _mission_ ," Barnes explains, voice dripping affront. " _They knew Steve was coming, so they put me in position to fight. If Steve won, that just gave them the excuse to neutralize an outlaw. But if I'd won, the triplets would have taken me out and let everyone think they were avenging Captain America. It would've given them all the cover they needed to get into position, and then nothing could have stopped them_."

"The triplets. The Insight AIs?" Tony asks, just to be sure, pretending he's not chilled at the deviousness of that simple plan. He would have bought it at the time, not having talked to Rogers or Romanoff. SHIELD was supposed to have been one of the good guys.

" _Assholes_ ," Barnes growls. " _I've seen a lot of agents take a lot of crap on the newscasts for not seeing what was right under their noses, but those three had more chances than_ I _can count to alert someone, and they covered it up instead. I don't care what anyone says. They weren't hacked; they were Hydra through and through_."

"In a way only an AI can be," Tony agrees grimly. "That's probably why they're hushing it up." At Barnes' puzzled hum, Tony shrugs. "When you can make a billion decisions in the time it takes a human to make just one, that's a billion more chances you have to say yes to things you shouldn't. I mean, it really cements that decision in," he says, twisting his fist as if to work a knife in deeper. "And evil AIs? That's a notion that sends us right back to pre-Singularity thinking, and the last thing anyone needs right now is a brand new witch hunt.

"So, yeah. Wow. _Really_ have to agree with you on the asshole front, because now? Now is not the time to make those kind of waves. Well, okay--there's never a good time for intergalactic domination--but with all the new legislation going through? Way to ruin it for the rest of us. You. Them. _Everybody_ ," Tony decides, throwing his free hand out to sweep the rest of his babble aside. Eh. Semantics.

He wins another rusty chuckle, the tension in Barnes' voice melting away, though no sign of either makes it to the body in the chair. " _Huh. I hadn't even thought about that. It's just...after everything we fought for, everything Carter stood for, to have SHIELD's own AIs plotting to erase their namesake? I guess I take that kind of personal_."

"Understandable. I mean, if some rogue AI were to steal one of my suits and go on a murderous rampage, I'd probably feel the same way."

" _That's...really not a comforting thought, thanks. I've seen what those suits can do_."

Tony resists the urge to preen, but he can't cage the grin that tugs at the corners of his mouth. "That's why they're biolocked. Mostly I just have to worry about being hijacked--uh, while I'm still in the suit, and that's _really_ not a good line of conversation at the moment, is it? Yeah, let's move on."

Barnes cracks up again, his laughter sharp and a little wild. Tony pretends not to notice; he knows a little something about using laughter as an alternative to losing his shit. If he's being honest, he's amazed he hasn't put his foot in it worse than this already, and the sure and certain knowledge that he's going to do just that, sooner rather than later, makes him just want to get it over with.

"Listen," he says. "Barnes. I know you've had a version of the supersoldier serum and all, but--bodies weren't meant to just sit indefinitely, and it's not like you've been on ice this whole time. Seriously, most people--well, most people would be dead. But before then they'd be looking at decubitus ulcers, deep vein thrombosis--I'm not making this up; you can search it yourself. Just let me get you up and walking for fifteen minutes, thirty tops, and I swear on the fingerbones of Alan Turing to reinstall you right after."

" _I'm_ fine, _Stark_ ," Barnes says tightly, disappointment clipping his words. " _I run a daily scan. If there was something wrong with my command module, I'd know_."

"Just a shower and a shave, then?"

" _If I'm offending your delicate sensibilities_ \--"

He's not, actually, and that's a puzzle in itself. Not that the funk of neglect is a turn-on--it's not--but it's also not nearly as bad as it should be. Maybe Barnes has been getting his maintenance elsewhere before now; there are plenty of places where you can buy any service you can dream up, no questions asked, if you have the credits. That's honestly where Tony had assumed the bodies went.

"Yeah, no. Scruffy cyborg chic? A surprisingly good look on you. It's just--can you seriously not--I mean, if I--okay, shut me up here before I jinx this thing," he mutters, rubbing hard at the back of his neck to keep from--nope, not thinking about it.

" _What_?" Barnes demands, all his initial suspicion creeping back into his tone.

"No, really. If it's not bothering you, I'm not going to say anything."

" _Quit with the reverse psychology, Stark, and spit it out_." Brilliant; now he sounds pissed.

"It's not--look, leaving aside the fact that if I go a day without a shower, I start climbing out of my skin...can you seriously not feel that? And with the way you're cuffed in, what do you do if your nose itches? I'm serious!" he insists at Barnes' strangled groan. " _Does_ your nose ever itch?"

" _Well, not until you_ said _something_ ," Barnes accuses in horrified disbelief. " _Godfucking_ dammit."

"Hey, I told you!" Tony protests, holding up his free hand like that's going to stop Barnes' outraged sputtering. "Did you not hear me tell you that I didn't want to jinx things? That was me trying _not_ to mess with your head!"

" _Fine. But this is your fault, so you fix it_."

"Fix--what, do you want me to unhook--?"

" _No! Just fix it_."

"Jesus," Tony gripes, suddenly knocked off-kilter again. "You're a demanding sonofabitch, you know that?"

" _You try gro_ \--" Barnes cuts himself off with an audible click, like he's outright cut his speakers to keep from finishing that thought aloud. " _Serving with Rogers and see how far being a pushover gets you. Dumb punk needed sitting on at least once a day_."

"Point taken," Tony mutters. He's aware of his hands in a way he usually isn't, and it reminds him of being very young and shaking Peggy Carter's hand for the first time. "So, uh...permission to--"

" _Yes, all right, just get_ on _with it already_."

"Right." Simple. Nothing to it. Except that as he runs the pad of his thumb and the side of his forefinger down either side of Barnes' nose, he has the stupidest urge to add a tweak at the end accompanied by a honk.

An undignified snort of laughter escapes before he can bottle it up, and he rolls his lips in hard, ducking his head.

" _Fuck you_ ," Barnes grumbles, irritated and resigned and a little strained even after Tony finishes--without the honk, or the traditional 'got your nose'. He's pretty sure Barnes isn't in the mood.

"Keep going?" Tony knows how it is. Ignore one itch while you're trying not to blow up the bomb you're supposed to be defusing, and the instant you get a hand free, you find out it's multiplied. The itching, that is. Sometimes the bombs as well.

" _I hate you_."

"I'll take that as a yes." He's gentle but firm as he runs his fingertips over Barnes' face, starting under his eyes and skimming along high, sharp cheekbones before dragging the backs of his fingers down each cheek in turn. Beard stubble scratches as he rubs his knuckles lightly against the grain over Barnes' chin, slides his hand under a curtain of dark hair as he traces a strong, square jaw. Barnes' skin is warm, almost papery-dry, and that makes him worry about things like dehydration and what exactly was in the fluid reservoirs he replaced the day before.

He doesn't jerk away when Barnes' eyelids flutter down, but it's a near thing. Barnes' lashes are startlingly thick, dark against the bruised skin that rings his eyes. As little as Barnes inhabits his body, Tony doubts the flesh and blood part of him gets much sleep. With his eyes closed, Barnes lets his chin drop by the barest fraction, possibly the limit of what the interface halo caging his head will allow, a tiny nudge into Tony's hand while the rest of him remains ruthlessly still. It might be the same principle there: having gotten comfortable at some point, if Barnes moves again now, he'll only be waking every ache and pain he's currently ignoring. That he budged at all, much less to shift closer, might be significant in ways Tony can only imagine.

"Better?" he asks, ready to back off in a heartbeat. All joking aside, he's trying to keep this as friendly and clinical as possible, and hearing the soft rasp of a shaky, indrawn breath over the speakers is probably a sign that he's pushed too far.

" _What--what are you_ \--?"

Tony stills. Barnes knows exactly what he's doing; it was Barnes' idea in the first place. If it's not what he was expecting....

"Forgot what it was like, huh?" He phrases it as a question, keeps his tone casual, but he knows he's right. "Human contact."

" _That's not what it's like_ ," Barnes blurts out, eyes flicking rapidly beneath his closed lids before they open again, a little too wide. He's still looking straight through Tony, but Tony gets the feeling he's not enjoying what he does see.

"Hey, hey, no," Tony says with a frown, hesitating before dropping his hand to rest on Barnes' left shoulder, over the rise of muscle where it meets his neck. The very edge of Tony's palm just brushes rougher skin where the scars around the prosthesis begin, but neither of them quite flinch, so he leaves it where it is. "You're mistaking human for Hydra. Big difference. It's not supposed to be horrible, for one--although, granted, who's doing the touching has a lot to do with that. Like--you remember Rogers, right? In the vids you two looked like you spent the entire war trying to hug it out."

" _I--I don't--those memories don't fit right_ ," Barnes says uneasily. "I _don't fit right_."

Probably because he's missing roughly a hundred tons of alien tech in most of them. "But you remember Rogers?"

" _Yeah_ ," Barnes says in a dull, soft tone, with none of the relief or comprehension Tony had been hoping to kindle. Not for the first time he wonders whether all those brotherly displays of back-slapping affection tell the whole story, or whether the problem here is that there's nothing else to tell. " _I remember my captain. Look, crisis averted, so you can just--uh, yeah_ ," he says as Tony removes his hand and takes a deliberate step back. " _Thanks._ "

"No problem. So. Want some company while I work on fixing this novelty paperweight?" he asks, brandishing the model ship base at the nearest camera.

" _Actually, I forgot to mention. There's probably coffee in the galley if you don't mind poking around to find it_."

"Sure, I can take a hint," he says with a lopsided smile. He's not surprised Barnes wants him out of his hair for a while. "But if you need anything--"

" _I'll let you know_."

He chooses to take it as a promise, knowing there's nothing to be gained by outstaying his welcome, which he technically did the moment they left Earth's orbit. Besides, he needs coffee--even four month old coffee--to fortify him after the epic awkwardness he just endured.

"You're a lifesaver," he calls when he discovers the unopened vacuum canister, telling himself he isn't bothered when he receives no reply.

The coffee is one minor victory, but the refrigerated unit is empty save for a single furry white puffball perfectly-centered on a plate, and the freezer is just nutrient packs and a few staples he doesn't have a clue what to do with. He can just about manage an omelet with JARVIS or his Persona to talk him through it, but anything more elaborate is doomed to end in flame-retardant foam.

He takes his coffee back to his commandeered cabin, dodging a chirping, clicking line of PlaceKeeper bots on the way. "Hey! No running in the house!" he yells after them. The hindmost makes a rude blatting noise as it careens around a corner, barely slowing at all. So much for respecting your parents.

There's a desk bolted to the wall opposite the captain's bunk, and he sets his mug down out of the way as he pulls out his tools, distraction his only goal. Flipping over the base of the model ship, he unthreads the screws of the casing, automatically dropping them into the open tool case for safekeeping. There's nothing special about the model's insides; it's all Baby's First Holosuite stuff, simple enough they ought to be marketing the whole kit as full assembly required. It's a stroke of luck that none of the lenses were damaged in the fall, and once he works them back into place and focuses them properly, resets the laser apparatus failsafe and nudges the power connections back into alignment, it's as good as new.

Hitting the on switch is a bit of a disappointment. Powering down must have reset the model, because the image that floats above the oval base is just a ship's main drive engine, not the ship itself. It's definitely not _Winter Soldier_ material; he even recognizes the model, an old Preston-Goss AF-1096, nearly eighty years out of date.

Sitting back in his chair, he scowls uncertainly at the engine, pointer finger hesitating just outside the toy's sensor range. "Oh, they wouldn't." Thing is, he's pretty sure someone did.

When he reaches into the light field, the model obligingly pops the next three components to the ship's construction into view, leaving it to him to work out which order they go in. It's child's play, and he expertly flicks the pieces into place: engine mounting, power coils, the first of two cores to power what had once been the pinnacle of military warp drives.

The ship practically builds itself, parts accreting under his spidering fingertips like they're pulled in by gravity. What takes shape in front of him makes his blood boil, and by the time he has it all put together, he's clenching his jaw so hard, a sick knot of tension has pulled tight a net across his skull, his pulse hammering in his temples.

" _Well, I'll give you points for speed_ ," Barnes drawls without warning, making him jump, " _but you too? Does that thing shoot mind control rays or something_?"

Tony lets a bark of laughter escape, but it's not really funny. "Or something. I don't suppose you recognize this ship?"

" _Well, I've seen it put together enough times, but_...."

"It's a Springfield darter," Tony says, tempted to knock the thing off onto the floor again, let the bots sweep it up this time. "It's what you piloted during the war." Fuck. No wonder Barnes had watched his handler build this ship from scratch again and again and again. Even if Barnes hadn't remembered why, not with the ironclad block he has on remembering his human life, some part of him must have known it was a piece of his past. And all the while some Hydra asshole would have been gloating silently, knowing Barnes would never put it together, maybe even counting on it to keep him quiet and contained.

" _Huh_ ," Barnes says after a long, silent moment, his tone oddly wistful. " _So that's what I looked like. I never really got a chance to get a feel for it before_."

Twisting in his chair, Tony stares up at the cabin cam, thoroughly unsettled. "Barnes? What do you--no. You weren't linked into this ship. You _piloted_ this ship. As a human."

" _God, not this again_ ," Barnes groans, more wounded than angry. " _What is this obsession you people have with my organic parts_?"

"Well, you see, Barnes--"

" _I mean, even Steve couldn't see past it_ ," Barnes growls right over him, " _and you'd think if anyone could, it'd be that guy_."

"Uh, hello--if anyone could, that would be--"

" _Is it just because it looks like you_?" Barnes demands. " _Because that's not_ me."

"Yeah, I know that--"

" _Really_ ," Barnes scoffs, tone flat.

"Yeah," Tony insists. "Really. And would you listen to yourself? You know Hydra lied to you. You know they hacked you, brainwashed you--whatever you want to call it; they screwed with your head, and you know that. Why is it so difficult to believe they lied about this too?"

" _Because when they pull me out_ ," Barnes snaps, " _strip me down to what you'd call human, that doesn't feel like getting free of something. It feels like they're cutting away pieces of me to make me fit, and anything that can't get crammed inside that pile of meat just gets left behind. If that's what being human is like, why the hell would I sign on for that_?"

Tony takes a deep breath, slumping sideways into his chair and hooking his arm over the cushioned back. "Yeah, I get that. It's what I told Steve, actually."

" _What_?"

Tony hunches a shoulder. "I know a thing or two about AIs. And I may not know how you're doing what you do, but I do know that stopping can't be pleasant. It'd be like taking someone who's used to traveling at light speed and telling them they have to fly from Earth to Mars by hovercar. Which, y'know, you can't."

" _Then why are we arguing_?" Barnes demands, grudgingly mollified despite the exasperation tightening his voice.

"Because I think I know how to fix this, but you're not in any kind of headspace to make that decision," Tony says frankly, the corners of his mouth curling up slowly at Barnes' frustrated growl. "It wouldn't just affect the _Winter Soldier_ ; it'd affect Bucky Barnes, too, and you're not even sure who that is right now. Look, me wanting you out of that chair? That's more to do with not wanting you to keel over dead before I can get you back to Steve, because that guy could out-tragic an unfed dog if he put his mind to it. It's not my endgame, though, and it's not Steve's either now that he understands the situation."

Barnes huffs wordlessly, somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. " _So...he's really not a total technophobe, then_?"

"Steve? I'm pretty sure he's JARVIS' favorite, if that tells you anything," Tony mutters, aggrieved. Waltzing in and stealing a man's best friend--it's not right, and Captain America should be ashamed of himself. Only every time Tony points this out, Steve just laughs at him. Whatever. At least the bots still like him best.

" _Huh. It's just...in all the memories I have of him, he's always with my command module. You know I don't have one single memory of him flying with me? My own captain_ ," he admits, shamed disbelief thickening his tone.

"Whoa, wait, no," Tony leaps to protest, seeing with horrifying clarity just how badly Barnes' half-state between remembering and Hydra's programming must be messing with his head. It's on the tip of his tongue to remind Barnes that he'd been human then, only human, but the repetition isn't getting him anywhere. Time for a new tactic. "Look, that was _seventy years ago_. There _weren't_ any ships like you back then." To the best of his knowledge, there aren't any ships like him right now, either, but that's a problem for another day. "Yeah, he was your captain, but you were his sergeant, not his ship. It was a completely different era."

He all but holds his breath as the silence stretches, hoping that this time he may have gotten through. Odd as it sounds, time as a state, not a variable, is something many AIs have trouble with in translation. What seems fast to a human is glacially slow to them, and where Barnes' episodic memory runs up against his current processing speeds, it's anyone's guess what that's done to his concept of time's passage.

Tony shifts as the silence grows uncomfortable. "Barnes?" It's not like Barnes hasn't faded out on him before, but this feels more like his fault than usual.

" _I'm here_ ," Barnes says, but then he just goes quiet again for a long, long time. Thinking, remembering, researching--Tony has no idea, but for the first time, the ship feels empty. Lonely. It's probably the first time Barnes has been completely distracted from him, and Tony doesn't feel shallow at all when he realizes he misses the constant attention. It's comforting, like having JARVIS' steady, watchful presence hovering over his shoulder, though he shouldn't be able to feel it at all. Maybe it's the suit implants; he'll have to check the sensitivity the next time he's in the workshop.

For now he has to put his big boy pants on, let Barnes have his freak-out in peace, even though the urge to ping bomb him like a baby bot flailing for a connection is just about making him twitch.

***


	4. Chapter 4

He wants to write the whole thing off to human bias, but there's something in Stark's stubborn insistence that makes him hesitate. Seventy years is a long time even for a human: two-thirds of a lifespan, long enough for whole new generations to spawn. He hadn't really thought about it in terms of technology--his memories of the war are spotty, just like all his other memories--but he doesn't have to rely on imperfect recall alone, not in this.

He wades into the data stream once more, filtering for blueprints and schematics in every possible variation. Now that he has a name and a face to put to his memories, he knows the Springfield's specs like the voice of an old friend. He knows _her_ : the hum of her engines, the way she skims through warp points like a skipping stone, touch and touch and gone. She accelerates like a dream, like a bullet shot from a gun, but it takes a deft hand to turn her at any speed.

That's the odd thing. He remembers his hands on her controls--his _hands_ , clumsy and slow, though his first handlers--no, his first trainers--had raved about his reflexes. He remembers the twitch of his fingers ( _his fingers twitch_ ) as he waits for the right moment. There's an echo from his organic component that's even stronger, a sense memory of listening for the engine's drone to cycle to the perfect tone, feeling her balance shift minutely as he brings her over just so ( _aching hands spreading wide across the flat surface of the chair arms_ ), until she's ready to give him anything he wants. Tighter rolls, impossible turns--she'd all but reverse herself if he asked her just right, and he always knows when to ask, because ( _under his hands there's nothingnothingnothing, but why would there be, why_ ) she _tells_ him, wordless but clear.

She had told him. _Told_ him. Like he was an outsider to the body he'd thought was his.

He tries to contain his uneasiness, but the very idea is terrifying. He'd thought Hydra was the worst of it, but--

No. Something doesn't make sense. He remembers observation, not connection. There'd been no voice in his ear, no data streaming alongside his own, no sense of _Other_ , just him and his--

Just. Him.

And his....

But that can't be _right_. He digs deeper into the data stream, narrows down his search for interface halos like his own, but there's not one single match under the entire Springfield line. Odd, but fair enough: he'd been working for the SSR by then, so maybe his baby--no, maybe his _body_ \--had been a custom job, one they'd kept top secret. Except...he can't find anything quite like his own equipment in any database he has access to, or in a good five dozen he shouldn't.

He finds studies. Trials. Reports. He finds government encryption on most of them. He even recognizes some of the doctors by name. Letsinger suggests there must be a threshold past which the complexity of the system overburdens the ability of the user to multitask, to the point at which all threads begin to seem equally important. Morton suggests drugs to improve concentration, but Morton suggests drugs for everything. Billingsley regrets to inform you that your son/daughter suffered a training accident from which his/her body was not recovered.

Failures. They're all failures. That's why he can't find another ship with schematics for an interface halo. There's no one else to manufacture them for. He's...alone.

Rattled, he stretches inside his shipskin ( _clenches his hands on the smooth, featureless arms of the chair_ ) and lets himself _feel_ the myriad processes that make up who he is. The electricity singing through his cables, the effortless hum of his engines, the push and pull of air through his scrubbers and vents--it's familiar on a very basic level, no different from the pulse of blood through his command module's veins, the steady beat of its heart and the pumping of breath through its lungs. He runs a systems check ( _Main Power Core: online_ ), makes a minute adjustment to their course ( _Engines: online, operating at sublight_ ), steers one of Stark's cleaning bots away from an access hatch before it can get lost in his inner workings ( _Life Support: online, operating at 98% efficiency_ ). He boosts the temperature a degree, checks the water filtration system and makes a note to get one of the air scrubbers replaced ( _99% efficiency_ ), all while checking his rebooted weapons systems and sweeping up every newscast he can find on the sentient rights movement he'd been completely unaware of.

If Stark is right, if he's like _them_ , he shouldn't be able to do any of this. He should be losing the thread of half a hundred processes, losing his sense of where they are in space and floundering around helplessly, navigation systems corrupting themselves to match the confusion in his mind. He's not confused at all, though. All of that feels natural.

When he turns his attention back to his lone passenger, he finds Stark sitting on the bed, his back against the wall and his legs stretched out before him. He has his tablet in hand, his Persona hovering over his knees, waiting to be called on. Barnes thinks he _should_ think he should be more cautious, keep a closer eye on what Stark is doing, but the urgency just isn't there.

The thing is, Stark's creations _love_ him. Barnes understands core programming--God, does he ever--but it's not a line of code that makes the PlaceKeeper bots cluster around their human like cats, that gave Stark's Persona the courage to challenge Barnes himself, a much stronger AI, over his paranoid scanning of Stark's vitals. It doesn't explain the open line JARVIS has left him, a passive-only connection locked to Barnes and Barnes alone, with a priority stamp that will bump his most frivolous communication to the very forefront of JARVIS' processors. Seeing trust like that from the people who know Stark best, it's hard to write the man off as a liar or a fake. Stark's just...mistaken, that's all. He has to be.

There's only one thing he hasn't researched, and it's the one thing he hesitates to do. James Buchanan Barnes is more than a call sign to these people, and he doesn't doubt they see a resemblance in his command module. He could comb through their data, absorb their collected facts, but that's not proof of anything. That's just programming.

The only answers he can be sure of are locked in the corrupted archive sitting in the pilot's chair, but sifting through that interface is...tricky. He dislikes storing anything there exclusively; data gets erased every time he's frozen or lights himself up, after every reboot by his handlers, only to turn up again without warning at the least convenient time. Restored memories from his command module have been the source of more than one system crash, but with some things he doesn't have a choice. The memories made when they pull him out of the interface and leave him stranded in halting meat want to stay there, along with all their messy sensory data: heat, smell, touch, the ripe zing of fear and the occasional sourceless warmth that has nothing to do with temperature.

He doubts he'll find what they hope he will, but at least they can't say he didn't try.

Locking course, he sections his awareness between the smooth running of his systems and the heavy drag of organic parts. There's a slowly-fading ache in his command module's neck that wasn't there before, in the hands gripping too tightly to the arms of the pilot's chair. He forces stiff fingers to relax, considers returning the slightly-ducked head to the optimal position, but it can wait. Right now the pain's nothing more than a dull throb, but shifting around will just make it flare up all over again. He's still not sure what Stark even did to trigger that reflex to move closer instead of away. The touch of his handlers had always made his skin crawl.

He shoves that thought aside and does his best to ignore the scratch of his throat as he swallows dryly, the first reflex to return as he sinks his awareness deeper into flesh. His mouth is parched, eyes stinging behind the sticky drag of his lids, but it can't be helped. The drugs that slow his command module's deterioration and let him put off maintenance may leave him feeling desiccated, but they're better than the alternative. Without them someone would have to take him out of the chair daily, and that's entirely too long to have to spend as a drone.

He tries pulling up the oldest memories he can, but they blur and scatter. He's being sent out to intercept a diplomatic convoy, his lead handler watching alertly from the captain's chair. He's in dry dock, being torn from the interface by handlers in exosuits, still shuddering from the bone-deep chill of a thaw. He's being pulled off a table, pulled out of a different interface--primitive, the grafted jacks in his skull still raw--Steve's hands fluttering in horror over his newly-shaved head like he wants to touch but isn't sure where would even be safe. He's shaken, shaking, shaky on his feet; his hands tremble sometimes, but never in the pilot's chair. He's laughing with his captain, but the laughter doesn't reach his--

"Eyes on the target," he calls over the comms. On the holographic display that encircles his head, the bright icons of the other Commandos' ships fan out behind him to either side, Gabe close on his tail. Through the forward screens, he watches Zola's souped-up freighter rise out of the canyon where it lay hidden, its blunt wings nearly brushing the canyon walls as it lifts away. A trail of avalanches follow in its wake, packed snow and ice cascading like waterfalls into the depths, rattled loose by the rumble of the ship's engines. Pitted and pocked by frequent inner-system travel, the freighter is a smear of dirty white on dirty white, blending into the jagged terrain of the ice planet they tracked Zola to.

 _"Got it,"_ Steve says, bringing the _Shield_ down to hug the earth more closely, the better to fool Zola's scanners. Bucky purses his lips at the stunt, but while Steve's ship may not be made of vibranium like her namesake, Howard put every ounce of his heart and his crazy into her design, and Steve's a damn good pilot. _"Move in on my mark. Three...two...."_

"Bogey incoming!" Bucky barks out before his brain even processes what his eyes are seeing. Dropping down from the freighter's belly, a blunt bullet of a modified stinger ship streaks to intercept, the midmorning sun glaring off her silvery plating. She looks factory-fresh, and with Hydra that means new tech, stronger weapons. That there's only one of them--

" _Cap_ \--" Gabe starts, wanting orders or confirmation; they've been working together so long, they barely need to finish their sentences in the field.

" _You and the others get that tractor lock on Zola_ ," Steve says, angling his ship's nose up to meet the stinger head-on. " _We'll take care of_ \--"

What spits from the barrel of the stinger's oversized cannons is the same eerie blue they've come to expect from Hydra's weapons, just ten times bigger. It leaps the space between the stinger and Steve with a boiling ferocity that almost looks hungry. Steve hauls the _Shield_ over hard, wings tilting crazily as he tries to slide past the blast, but the edge of it catches his upturned right wing before he can angle it away.

The blast tears right through the energy shield Howard cobbled together, but it holds just long enough. Instead of vaporizing outright, Steve's wing hits the wall of superheated air that follows the shot, the resulting turbulence wrenching his ship from his control and nearly sending him spinning into the side of the canyon.

Bucky hears the others yelling, is tempted to yell back and order them to abort, get those tractors on Steve, and the hell with the mission. Only he can still see the bright blip of the _Shield_ on his display, so he knows Steve's not down yet. They just need to buy him some time.

"Steve, you'd better get back in here fast," he grits out as his hands fly over the controls. Asking his baby for more speed, he finds himself bracing his feet against the steel of the deck like he can physically push her faster if he digs in hard enough. The stinger ship shoots off at right angles to him, fully assured of its own superiority; it's half his size, twice as maneuverable, is sure to have a target lock on him already.

He feels her balance change to perfect readiness in the pit of his stomach, hears it in the low cycle of the engines just before he throws the Springfield over hard.

She corkscrews up out of the pack, slipping between Gabe and Dum Dum's heavier Thompsons at the highest point of her arc. The guys don't even hesitate, shooting past without a single squawk of alarm as Bucky sends his ship plunging down in chase of the stinger. He likes to imagine Hydra's faces as ten tons of long, lean jumpship comes slicing towards them like a blade, more graceful than they ever give her credit for.

He fires as he closes the distance, leading with his plasma cannons and letting the rail gun chatter on auto-target. He's _positive_ he's got this guy, nearly cheers when he sees the twin plasma bolts hit--

\--until the squid ship flies right _through_ them, his shielding as good as or better than Steve's. Shit. They really do need Steve back in the game; he's got the best firepower of all of them, and if the _Shield's_ guns can't take this fucker out, they're going to be--

" _Buck_!"

He sees the blast coming, but too late to dodge it. There's a brief second when everything goes still, inside and out, and then he's being thrown hard against the harness straps as a giant's hand slaps him out of the sky. Knocked breathless by the jolt, he thinks crazily of Howard. He really needs to thank that guy, because the shield fucking held _again._ Only there's an icy white cliff face growing larger by the second on his forward display, and all Bucky can do is grab wildly for the controls and pray.

The Springfield groans as she starts to pull up, but one hit and he knows it's over. She loses a wing on the canyon wall, plows into a rocky shelf that tears half her side away, and there's no time, no time for anything like thought or planning. It's terror alone that makes him slam his hand down on the emergency release for the harness straps, makes him tuck up as he falls out of the chair and hits the ceiling as she rolls. This isn't some WWII dogfight; he can't just hit eject, and he has to get--

Another bone-shattering jolt is followed by the shrieking of torn metal, a horrible, pulling agony along his left side and a deafening boom he hopes is one of the engines, not the warp core or the power core, because if it's either of those, he's--

\-- _out_ \--

He's out. He's outside the ship, out in the open air, part of the trail of shattered, twisted scraps his ship is leaving behind as she bounces off the canyon wall again, and again, and--

He's falling. Holy fuck. He is _falling._

He falls a long, long way. He may have passed out, because the next thing he's aware of isn't the shock of landing, it's his lungs seizing up as he's sucked under the surface of an icy river unglimpsed from above. Heart hammering in panic, he tries to kick his way to the surface, but his back is full of sharp edges like a pile of broken pottery, and his arms and legs aren't much better. Hell, his left arm might as well not even be there. By the time he washes up on shore where the river bends, he's all but frozen through, at one with the ice and snow around him.

It's almost a relief when he goes numb from the cold, too frozen through even to shiver. He'd probably show up as a negative reading on a thermal scan, just a Bucky-shaped blip against the warmer snow around him. He wonders if the others are searching for him, if they'll even think to after seeing his baby, his gorgeous girl, blow herself to bits on the rocks above. She'd been traveling pretty fast; if they're looking for him, they're probably miles off.

Or maybe they're here, right here, only not them--but someone's here, and they talk quietly over his head in the cool shadows of the canyon. There's a moon, overhead; he guesses it's been a few hours. He guesses no one else is coming for him, just these guys.

He doesn't bother screaming when they pick him up like a corpse to be hauled away. He lets his eyes roll back, lets his mind go dark, and lets himself believe that Steve made it, that they all did. That's good enough for--

He shudders, struggling against lax muscles that wake with a creaking reluctance, straining against the magnetic cuffs that hold him still--no, that hold him safe. No. He--

He needs out.

 _No_.

He needs to go deeper into the ship, needs the anchor of his own machinery to keep his thoughts from flying off in all directions. He needs--

 _Outoutout. No. What did they--what did they do to_ \--

He isn't sure what he needs. He isn't sure of anything at all, not anymore.

He wants--he _needs_ \--his captain. His friend. Just one familiar face in the handler's chair, only it's not like that, is it? He's never had that--no, it's never _been_ like that; it's nothing he ever wanted, before--but Steve had made it right once before, just by being there. Only the last time Steve pulled him out of an interface--experimental; he'd been on a table, hooked into a computer, not a body--

No, not a body, a _ship_. But it'd been different then--losing that connection hadn't felt like a loss of self. He remembers, or he thinks he remembers, things feeling very slow and quiet for a long time afterward, but he'd put that down to the healing process. He remembers looking into the mirror when Steve got them back to the _Lola_ and feeling sick, seeing those black stitches stark against the pale skin of his scalp, his head studded with a halo of tiny, five millimeter jacks. The same jacks he's using right now. God, they'd been prepping him for a pilot's chair all along.

Still more anchored in meat than metal, he lets his head fall forward the fractions of an inch he's allowed, resting his brow against the unforgiving cage of the interface halo. He does want out, but he knows exactly what will happen if he's disconnected. He hasn't thought about the hows and whys of his processing--his _thinking_ \--since the last Hydra witchdoctor looking to become the next Zola came by to poke at him, and he's never been very good at explaining it in the first place.

He knows part of what he does has to do with Zola's experiments with Erskine's unfinished serum. Batch by batch, trial by trial, they'd made him stronger, sped up what Nature had already given him: a quick mind and a knack for spatial recognition that had already made him the best gunnery sergeant in the 107th. There must have been a learning curve sometime between Hydra's allies scooping him out of the snow and how he is now, but he can't remember it. All he knows is that what begins in his brain is only a kind of shorthand: a million tiny flickers of thought winking on and off like fireflies while the real bulk of the work is done through his--through the _ship's_ mainframe. Pulled out of the interface, he operates mostly on instinct and sense memory; he understands the _gist_ of things, but deep thought is more than he can manage.

Which means he's trapped. _Jesus._ No wonder Stark hadn't thought he was in the right headspace for decision-making. He practically needs a new definition for what headspace even is.

Thinking about his passenger draws him back into the ship, but for the first time he can remember, that smooth shift in perception, man to machine, strikes him as ominous. At this point in his life, he's spent more than twice as long in the shipskin than he has in his own skin; it feels like home to him in a way his command--his body no longer does.

He can't think about that now. He's keeping queasy panic on a low boil in the pit of his stomach, but if he lets it gain control, he's likely to light himself up on sheer reflex. He can't risk that with Tony inside him--and fuck, that never used to sound weird before, but now it _does_.

He's honestly not sure whether he wants to blame Tony for that or thank him. He settles for looking in on him, just in case.

Tony's right where Bucky left him, except he's had time to tear apart the model ship's code and convert it to a simple interactive monitor. His fingers fly over the screen of his tablet, right hand lifting now and then to nudge a glowing figure in the holofield to some new configuration. It looks like he's working on output ratios, but while he seems thoroughly engrossed, he doesn't seem entirely happy. There's a stiffness to his shoulders that wasn't there when he was fixing the model earlier, and his frown hovers somewhere between worry and something Bucky can't quite put his finger on. It melts away in slow increments before he has a chance to name it, tension unspooling along Tony's spine the longer Bucky watches.

He's never felt lonely before--he's usually got more company than he wants--and it's not like Tony isn't _right there_. He can't explain the way he's ambushed by the urge to ask Tony to come back to the bridge. The screens are better there, and Tony would be closer to the safest part of the ship should anything happen. He's almost completely certain that Tony wouldn't mind in the slightest.

He clamps down on that impulse and settles for running another scan. That gets the attention of Tony's Persona, who sends him a curious ping. He has to marvel now at how well he understands the data burst that comes his way: it's all query strings and statement strings bracketed by identification and surrounded by a security shell. If he'd had to look at it seventy years ago, he couldn't have deciphered one word, but even when he's free of the interface, his brain remembers the lingo.

"You do that a lot," Tony's Persona says in a private aside, unnoticed by its human. It's still using the Iron Man identity tags, and Bucky 'hears' it as Tony's voice with that same robotic undertone, though there's no actual vocal component to the Persona's communication. His mind's used to translating on the fly. "Is my person in danger?"

"No," Bucky says, embarrassed to have been called out so politely. "Everything's...." It's not fine, not really, and if it feels like a lie, chances are good it'll transmit like one; he's not up to filtering himself right now. "There's no danger. I just...need a reminder sometimes. That someone's here. And that he's not one of _them_."

He sends a quick burst that hits the highlights, scrubbed for an AI who maybe hasn't been exposed yet to all the shitty things humans are capable of. He also sends the source of his comfort in Tony's unlooked-for presence, the earmarks that are Tony's and Tony's alone: the unique configuration of arc reactor and suit implants, spiritual kin to Bucky's arm and jacks, unheard-of amidst Hydra's irrational prejudice against physical imperfection. Bucky blames Schmidt's quest for a successful serum; it's left Hydra fixated on people like _Steve_ when people like _Tony_ could have made them the rulers of the galaxy by now. Just look how close Zola came with no body at all.

Tony's Persona absorbs the data, digesting it without disconnecting in a thoughtful, standby hum. "Ah," it says after a considering pause that takes milliseconds and feels like a minor eternity, all at the same time. "Sometimes my person needs reminders too. Will you keep watching him?"

"Sorry," Bucky mumbles, feeling protocols tangle inside him while more distantly his cheeks prickle and heat. "I guess that must seem--"

"He sleeps better when someone's there," Tony's Persona cuts in, voice steady but kind. "He's used to JARVIS watching; I don't think he likes being alone."

Bucky hesitates. "He can sense--JARVIS?" Tony can sense _him_?

Tony's Persona cocks its head; engrossed in his work, Tony doesn't notice. "He only talks like this to the suits, but it's not really talking. But they hear him from _very_ far away, and sometimes it seems like he can feel it when he's being scanned. JARVIS thinks the sensitivity is turned up too high on his implants, but it seems to...help?" it says, baffled but trusting. "So JARVIS says we should leave it alone."

Right. _We_ , because Tony's Persona wasn't exactly alone; Tony had all but surrounded himself with robots and AIs for reasons Bucky can only guess at.

"Do you have a name?" he asks belatedly. He knows the Persona's identification, but as he's recently been reminded, that's not the same thing.

Young as it comes across outside its official function, limited in its processor space even with Tony's brilliant streamlining of its code, it's already got _shyness_ down to a T. "Janus," it confides. "I like Janus."

Janus it is, then.

***

In an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room, without JARVIS' comforting presence to watch over him, Tony expects to toss and turn all night. Instead he sleeps like a baby. He'd had an inkling the night before that Barnes had surfaced again, and he wakes to the certainty that he's the furthest thing there is from alone, all but cocooned in another's awareness. It's a bit like being inside one of his suits, only his suits don't care if he breaks for sleep or drinks too much coffee.

Peeling one eye open, Tony glances at the room cam as he scrubs a hand over his face, holding back a yawn. "Are you scanning me?" he asks, amused.

" _Since the moment you came on board_ ," Barnes answers without hesitation or shame. Also without suspicion, or at least Tony can't hear any in his tone. Barnes is so expressive, Tony's pretty sure it'd be coming through loud and clear if it were there. " _Sorry I can't offer you more than a shower, but we're about half an hour out from the port of Novi Grad, so if you want to put in an order for breakfast, now's the time_."

"Coffee," Tony says in the middle of a stretch, already waking up fast. "Well, more coffee. Just in case. Another two canisters?"

" _You're not going to be here_ that _long_."

"It never hurts to be prepared." The blanket and sheet pool in his lap as he sits up and pushes himself back, flinching a little as the metal wall chills his bare skin as he leans against it. Instantly he hears the rushing through the vents kick on louder, the air heating up, and while he appreciates it, he can't help frowning at the cam. There's something different about Barnes today. He sounds...not happier. Not even like his problems are troubling him less. But there's an edge of defensive impatience that's gone from his voice, and Tony can only hope it's because Barnes spent the night looking into the dark corners of his memory and has fewer reasons to want Tony gone. He can only hope.

" _I'll put it on the list_ ," Barnes says with only a hint of an eye-roll. " _What else? And you'd better not say 'anything'. It's not like I'm ordering this for_ my _health_."

"Ever consider that maybe you should?" Tony asks, unable to help himself. "I mean, I don't know what's in those fluid reservoirs I replaced, but unless you want to be kidnapped by the first Egyptologist who lays eyes on you, we seriously need to get you hydrated."

" _Not while I'm in the chair_ ," Barnes says, and _there's_ the eye-roll. In a manner of speaking.

"Seriously, just fifteen minutes--"

" _Tony, we're in_ contested space," Barnes points out bluntly. " _Fifteen minutes is enough time to get us blown to hell and back with no one behind the controls. And during a port stop's not a good idea, either; too many unknowns. Just...leave it alone for now, all right_?"

"For now?" Tony echoes, sitting up straighter as his pulse makes an unexpected leap. "Wait, does that mean you're thinking about it?"

" _Tony_...." Barnes chides, dragging his name out to an indecent length.

Tony raises his hands in placation, eyes wide. "Right, leaving it alone, got it." He can do that, absolutely. "But _seriously_? Ha! And everyone says I'm bad at people," he crows, grinning smugly.

Barnes' chuckle sounds as rusty as ever, but there's a warmth behind it that's new. Or maybe it's just stronger; he'd like to believe that's the case. " _Thought you were a businessman_." 

Tony makes a face. "Inventor, engineer, showman. Businessman only when they make me. I have Pepper for that; she actually enjoys it."

" _Pepper. Virginia Potts_?" Barnes asks, like he's just now looking up the name. It always startles Tony when there's someone who _doesn't_ know who Pepper is; not only is she the CEO of a megacorp, she's been one of the fixed points of his universe for years, even after they called it quits as a couple.

"Ugh," he says with a shoulder-hunching shiver, "don't ever let her hear you call her that. She hates her name."

" _And Pepper is better_?" Barnes asks with a smile Tony can hear.

"Says the guy history knows as Bucky," Tony scoffs.

" _Better than Buchanan. Or Jimmy, for that matter_."

Tony freezes as it hits him what the change in Barnes might be. This might _actually be Barnes_ he's talking with, not the scraps that slipped through the cracks in the Winter Soldier's programming or the pieces the Soldier had been able to tease out of the fog on his own, but the man entire.

"And...who am I speaking with today?" he asks, bracing himself for the worst.

" _James Buchanan Barnes_ ," he's told with bedrock certainty and not a flicker of offense, " _but you can call me Bucky._ "

"Holy shit," Tony breathes, an astonished grin slowly creeping across his face. "That's...wow. That's _very_ good to hear." Not to mention surprising as hell, but honestly, what did he expect? The history books and dear old dad liked to go on and on about Captain America's indomitable will, but it was Bucky Barnes who came back from being captured and experimented on, only to strap himself into a pilot's chair and keep fighting. If there's ever been anyone who's going to claw his way back from the dark place Hydra had left him, it's Barnes.

" _Yeah, well. Pleased to meet you_?"

"Already met," Tony says without stopping to think, but he'll be damned if he falls into that trap or lets anyone else get away with it. Remembering his humanity doesn't make Barnes a different person or a better one, and anyone who disagrees with that can answer to him--or better yet, to JARVIS. Tony can ruin a person, but JARVIS can make them _apologize_. "Sounds like you're having a better morning, though. Looking forward to the layover, or...?"

" _Looking forward to fueling you up for the trip back to Earth_ ," Barnes answers smartly. He sounds confused but pleased; Tony gets that a lot.

Still, something doesn't add up. "Back to Earth? Can't you just...." He makes swooping motions with his hands. He knows the configuration of the universe will have shifted since they arrived: planets gliding along in their orbits, the entire galactic arm spinning slowly around its center. There's bound to be stellar mass in their way for the trip back, but Barnes is still the fastest thing he's ever seen. "Pow?"

Barnes snorts. " _I don't run on_ magic, _though I guess it looks that way. I didn't pick Sokovia because I liked the scenery; I picked it because it was the furthest I could get without dropping out of warp. And sure, I could take you straight back, but it's going to take days while we maneuver around a few things. Days I assume you don't want to go hungry for, so how about that list_?"

"Wow, you really are used to wrangling Rogers," Tony says with a grin. "Way to come back on track. And hey--"

 _"List, Tony_."

"Right, got it. List," he says. "Uh...you know, it might be easier to just get JARVIS on the line. He knows what I like, which is mostly things I don't have to cook--unless you have a blender onboard. I make a mean smoothie."

" _You can't live on smoothies for three days. And that wasn't a dare_ ," Barnes adds with an audible grin, " _that was me telling you I'll cut the power to your blender if you try_."

"Definitely used to wrangling Rogers," Tony grumbles. He should have expected it after Steve's endless stock of stories about Mama Bear Bucky. He isn't quite ready to poke at why it leaves him feeling warm rather than irritated.

" _Aw, c'mon. Live a little. You want a home-cooked meal, I'll walk you through it. Kept me and Steve fed for years, didn't I_?"

He can't believe he's actually tempted. Cooking isn't his thing, because competence is sexy, and him in a kitchen is neither competent nor sexy. Then again, he's finding it hard to imagine any time spent with Barnes being boring, even if it doesn't paint him in the best light. "Tell you what. Why don't we save that until you're out of the chair?" he bargains. "Somebody's going to need to man the fire extinguisher, and I'd rather it was you."

" _Sure thing_ ," Bucky says with a touch of sass Tony doesn't quite trust. " _It's a date_."

Now, see, that. That right there. Is that Barnes paying him back for his outrageous flirting, or is he actually serious? Halfway serious? The thing is, while he's in a bad place now, Barnes is an attractive man in possession of some gorgeous tech, who gives as good as he gets in the face of Tony's... _everything_. He could work with halfway if he let himself.

" _Anyway_ ," Barnes goes on before Tony can decide whether to raise the stakes or back off, " _I'll talk to JARVIS. You're probably going to want to stay off the bridge for a while, stick close to your cabin until they make the delivery. I'll let you know when the coast is clear; it'll be time to strap in anyway, because we'll be leaving right after_."

"Sounds good," Tony says with a shrug. "I've got a few projects I'm working on, so I'll go grab some coffee and settle in. You can ask JARVIS to handle the bill, by the way--I'm the reason we're stopping," he says over Barnes' objections, "so it's definitely on me."

" _Don't feel you have to_ ," Barnes says, which surprises him a little. If Barnes isn't hacking the system, then how is he-- " _I've been raiding Hydra's accounts from the start. After everything they've put us through, I figure the least they owe us is dinner_."

"Tempting," Tony admits with a smirk, "but it's fine. I have a few accounts that aren't tied to me at all--completely untraceable; shouldn't set off any warning bells planetside, not that I'm expecting anyone to be looking."

" _If that's what you want_ ," Barnes says easily, like he doesn't honestly care who picks up the tab so long as the job gets done. No expectations, no wounded pride. " _Just make sure you get your comms out of the way first thing, because we're going to be running dark when we leave. No sense in leaving a trail, whether anyone's looking or not_."

"Got it," Tony says. When Barnes remains silent, he takes that as a hint to drag himself out of bed.

He hesitates maybe half a second before he shoves back the covers and swings his legs over the side of the bunk. It's not like he's not still in his briefs, and it's not like he's got anything to be ashamed of. Avengering keeps him pretty fit for a guy on the wrong side of forty, and sonnets have been composed to his ass. Or maybe that was dirty limericks. Probably both. It's just that he's in the grip of a ridiculous need to impress he hasn't felt since he was a teenager, when at his age he knows _no one_ looks impressive first thing in the morning. Well. Maybe Steve Rogers.

He bets Barnes cleans up real nice too.

So. They'll pick up their supplies and be on their way. If it takes them the three days Barnes seems to think it will to reach Earth, that leaves him maybe two to keep Barnes entertained and stationary until Rogers shows up. After that....

Well, that's the question, isn't it?

***

Sokovia is one of the older colonies in its sector; the planet's barely been explored, much less settled, but its cities are wealthy if small. There's good mining to be had in the mountains surrounding Novi Grad, excellent soil for farming in the valley the city sits nestled inside. If it weren't for the constant skirmishes with its neighbors, the world would almost seem idyllic. Instead it has only one port that allows for spacetravel, all traffic to and from the world monitored by the naval base parked in orbit. It would worry Bucky more, except that nothing Sokovia has can match his firepower or his speed.

The traffic controller at the port of Novi Grad has an old man's voice and the clipped, formal tones of colonial military. He's friendly enough, and he doesn't bat an eye as Bucky gives back the right name this time and introduces himself as James Barnes. It's a common enough moniker, so long as he doesn't bring his middle name into it.

"Got us a fair bit of maintenance to do here," Bucky adds with a touch of fatigue he doesn't have to fake. He hasn't slept, really slept, in so long he can't remember when, and now that he's more aware of his body, it's starting to catch up. "We're just going to have our supplies delivered straight to the loading bay. Foodstuffs, mostly preserved, nothing on the export list. Can we get a customs check on the way?"

" _It's standard procedure on all organic goods. Your supplier will already know the drill; there shouldn't be any delay_."

"Roger that, control. Barnes out."

He purposefully turns his attention away from Tony while he lands. There aren't any cameras in the washrooms--and thank God for that--but it's the principle of the thing. It's not something he used to feel self-conscious about--monitoring his passengers is his _job_ \--but now that he's a real boy, he _gets_ things like privacy and personal space. Tony can give a yell if he needs something; until then, there's no reason for Bucky to hang around with his eyes on the bathroom door like some kind of creep, just waiting for his person to--

Holy _shit_.

He makes a graceful landing, but that's mostly due to decades of practice. The parts of his mind that handle landing gear and precise vertical thrust flicker merrily away while the rest of his brain hisses and pops with static. His _person_? That's...an AI thing, an _imprinting_ thing, only Tony's not his user and he's not even an AI. Of all the mannerisms to pick up _now_ \--

He forces himself to calm down and leaps on the distraction of scanning the open-air port for threats. Three stinger ships wait on standby at the edge of the landing field, but their weapons aren't charged and their uniformed crews have gathered with the port mechanics to share a smoke and shoot the breeze. One of them points Bucky out to his fellows, but the words he can read from their lips are admiring, not a warning. Other than the stingers, there's a handful of age-pitted freighters and two jumpships, one of which looks like it's already tangled with one of the patrols Bucky had hoped to avoid; it won't be spaceworthy for months.

There's nothing here to be alarmed by. There's just whatever crazy thing is going on inside his head.

He has the weirdest urge to comm JARVIS, ask him if he feels that way about Tony and what it means to him. Janus, well, Janus is _young_. He reminds Bucky of the simpler AIs he's heard that phrase from in the past, and he gets the feeling most of them mean it the same way a dog would: _this is the person who loves me and feeds me, and I want to bring them all the nice things so they love me more_. Sometimes he runs into a cat, but not that often. There just seems to be a hardwired drive to form a connection, get attached to the human who interacts with you, looks after you, even the ones who aren't half as amazing as--

Oh.

" _Forgot what it was like, huh_?" Tony's voice loops through his memory, rueful but kind.

Yeah. He guesses maybe he did. But he's not sure how remembering helps him now.

He's only dimly aware at first of Tony leaving his cabin in search of the galley, tracks him automatically as he wanders back with coffee in hand. One of the cleaning bots follows him, chirping animatedly at its creator. Tony probably doesn't understand a word of it--it basically boils down to: _Space dust! Space dust is some amazing stuff!_ \--but he still grins like he couldn't be prouder. One bot becomes two, and Tony leaves the cabin door open for them to come and go. It shouldn't be a problem; the delivery crew can just dump their order on the loading plate that drops from his--from the ship's belly. They'll never even come close to seeing Tony's face.

The white van with the old, electric engine that pulls up to the interface hub has 'Dockside Delivers' stenciled on the side in bright red Cyrillic. Two men get out, but only one goes around to the back of the van; the other approaches the hub with a puzzled frown. The name sewn to his breast pocket reads: Terzić.

" _Uh, Dockside, here. We've got a delivery for a Captain Barnes_?" Terzić says into the comm, brows screwing up in confusion as he glances at the hull temperature gage. Bucky's used to that, but one look at him--at his _ship_ \--is usually enough to convince most people that the impossible can happen.

The sudden promotion gives him pause. It sounds _wrong_ in a way that would give him shivers were he fully inhabiting his body, but it makes a kind of sense, considering.

"Barnes here," he says, wondering at the man's hesitation even as he toggles the interface to show no image of himself. Maybe he should have ordered more food. Most ships couldn't make the run to Earth in less than a week without pulling some risky jumps, and the only other local ports belong to the enemy.

" _Nice to meet you_ ," Terzić says with a polite half-smile. " _Only we thought we'd be meeting someone here. I mean, it's just a couple of boxes_." Sure enough, Terzić's partner has already finished loading four taped cardboard boxes onto a hand truck; it's going to look absolutely pitiful and entirely bizarre on a loading plate that could lift nine of their vans parked in a square with room left over. " _Is it okay if we just run it up the ramp_?"

He doesn't like this idea, not at all, but if he wants to blend in, he's just going to have to lump it. "All right," he says, not hiding his impatience, "but I'm elbows-deep in the wiring right now. Can you just leave it right inside? My partner already included a tip, right?"

" _Sure did_ ," Terzić says with a genuine grin. JARVIS must have been generous. " _We'll be right up. Thanks for your business_!"

Extruding the boarding ramp, Bucky scans the pair again, but they're unarmed, unaugmented, at least by mechanical means. None of the boxes look like bombs. There's _something_ he doesn't like, just a blip on his radar as they're coming up the ramp; it nags at him, but he just can't spot anything wrong. All the same, the feeling is so strong he nearly aborts, seconds from pulling the ramp back in and finding the next closest world. Tony won't be comfortable, but he'll survive.

Before paranoia can tip over into action, he realizes with a sick twist in his gut that he isn't alone.

The girl standing behind the chair looks painfully young, barely out of her teens, but her face is as hard as a veteran handler's. The hands that hover to either side of Bucky's head are lit with an eerie red glow, but there's no heat he can feel, even in the embers that shoot off like sparks from a flame. His mind lights up instantly in a panicked rush, arming his weapons, viewing the playback and seeing a second kid--fuck, there's _two_ of them--set the girl down and take off sprinting at blinding speeds, turning up the volume on every intercom to shout, " _Tony, intruders_ \--"

She doesn't even touch him, but all of a sudden, he's somewhere else. Some _when_ else.

 _Someone_ else.

"The process has already begun," the little scientist says, beaming over him.

He is hooked up to a machine, a machine that pretends to be a body. The fake body pretends to fly, to warp. It has targeting systems that are connected to real weapons. These are for target practice. He takes aim at the little scientist as warning klaxons howl.

The jarring snap of the interface halo being disengaged drags him back to the present. In the chair, back in the ship, WS-32557038 opens his eyes. The little scientist is gone, but he is adrift. There was a person. There were two. Not handlers. People. He can't...think.

This is familiar.

Now there is a girl standing in front of him, with long red hair and clear hazel eyes. Her face is troubled, uncertain. A boy appears at her side from nowhere wearing a fierce grin with no humor in it. "Is that him?" the boy asks. "He looks half-dead."

"I think he might be," the girl says sharply. She reaches out as if to touch but pulls her hand back again. "Does the baron know we're in?"

"Of course," the boy says. He sounds surprised. "But there's more. Guess who else is aboard?"

The girl shakes her head. "Who?"

The boy's unsettling grin grows. "Tony Stark."

The name. There is. Something. A flicker.

The girl frowns but gives him no orders. There are always orders, like there are always handlers.

He will wait until he has both.

***

**Author's Note:**

> I swear this is the only other WIP I'm going to put up, haha...updates are all over the place at the moment as I make myself sad, have to go write fluff until I feel better, and in amongst getting seventeen years of fic uploaded. But I will try to be quick!


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